Della Connor in “Stop Thief” (1915) 🇺🇸
Della Connor, the former Pathé star who has just completed her work as Sadie Small in “Officer 666,” has been engaged by George Kleine for one of the important parts in his coming Stop Thief.
Miss Connor will work with Mary Ryan, who is playing the feminine lead of the “maid” to Harry Mestayer’s “thief.”
Miss Connor is a petite blond and was formerly one of Gus Edwards’ protégés. She was lured to the silent stage under protest and spent a year with the Pathé Frères forces in the Jersey Hills. Miss Connor thinks that the best work of her career was done under the management of Frank Powell in George Kleine’s Officer 666.
The enthusiastic way in which she speaks of the pleasure she derives from her work, one is led to believe there would be considerably more than a protest if she were asked to leave the studio for the stage once more.
Miss Connor is a very beautiful young woman, as may be gathered by the accompanying engraving. She is an actress of ability and her work in Officer 666 is most pleasing. Mr. Kleine’s selection of players has been excellent throughout, but none is better than Miss Connor.
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A Silent Plea
Three-reel Vitagraph subject powerfully points out why indigent widowed mothers should be pensioned.
Reviewed by George Blaisdell.
It sometimes happens when we have a picture with a civic purpose that we get the moral but find the story has been overlooked. In A Silent Plea, a three-reel Vitagraph subject to be released on February 2, we have not only a powerful moral but also a powerful story. It is a plea for the turning over to widowed mothers of the money the state now devotes to the support of children in institutions, in order that the children may have the benefit of the mother’s guidance. The story was written by Mae Koch. The adaptation was by Marguerite Bertsch, in co-operation with Sophie Irene Loeb, member of the New York State Commission for Relief of Widowed Mothers. We are going to hear much of A Silent Plea following its release. It is a picture that will give an exhibitor opportunity of bringing to his house the leaders of civic thought in his community, and will give these opportunity to send their friends.
Edith Storey has the part of the mother who bravely fights her way in the world that she may support and keep to herself the son and the daughter following the death in an accident of the husband and father. As the sub-title indicates, it is the breaking of the tender thread that holds the home together — and every one knows of numberless instances of these comfortable homes and happy ones that have but one life between them and poverty. Miss Storey gives a portrayal that in strength matches the deep appeal of the many situations into which the mother is thrown. It is her picture more than that of the remainder of the cast. In the beginning we see her in the forgotten garb with the puffed sleeves of twenty years ago. The atmosphere of the happy domestic circle is finely established.
Following the accident the action jumps twenty years. The wife goes to an old friend of the family, now a state senator. To him she tells her story, and in retrospect we see what has happened in the intervening years. We see the breaking up of the home, the renting of a cheap apartment and the securing of employment by the wife; the indications in the acts of the children that the new environment is changing their characters for the worse; the relentless pursuit of the widow by her employer and her final discharge; her appeals to a charitable organization; the promised investigation and its unfruitful results; the arrest of the boy and the turning over by the kindly judge of the case to the Children’s Society; another investigation, and the taking away of the children, with its heartbreak for the mother. In her momentary visits she sees the children slipping away from her. When they are grown the mother is powerless to stem the tide that is pulling them down in their weaknesses. The daughter falls into the employment of the manufacturer who had discharged the mother. The son is arrested for falsifying his books.
This is the situation when the mother goes to the senator. He listens to the telling of this story. He announces that he is going into the senate and make a speech for the passage of the widows’ allowance bill. We see him as he does it. It is an impressive sight. Alternating titles, couched in eloquent sentences, tell us what he is saying. He appeals for the mothers and for the children — we get flashes of a group of the little ones. The senators, at the conclusion of the speech, crowd about the Senator and congratulate him — and pass the bill. The story ends right there. We may guess the rest; but the point has been made, and in a way that drives under our skin and into our minds the great need of legislative action in the one particular direction.
Lionel Belmore is the producer of this subject. He is to be thanked for what he has given us. Harry Morey is the senator. Mr. Morey has thrown into his interpretation a depth of feeling and a power of portrayal that makes his impress felt in the story. Donald Hall plays the husband, and plays it well. Edward Elkas is the manufacturer who meets his death when at a gay dinner party he arouses the ire of one of his companions; his attentions to the girl with him are only too plain.
In A Silent Plea we have a story with a purpose and a purpose with a story.
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Scene from A Silent Plea (Vitagraph)
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Fiske Not to Produce Pictures
Because of an error in the correspondence between B. A. Rolfe and the Alco Film Corporation, it was stated that Mrs. Fiske was to appear in a film version of Edward Sheldon’s The High Road. As a matter of fact the arrangement is merely that Mr. Rolfe has purchased from Mr. Fiske [Harrison Grey Fiske] the motion picture rights of The High Road, and will produce it with a star other than Mrs. Fiske. Mr. Fiske has not entered the motion picture field as a producer, nor has he given the Rolfe Photo Plays Company the right to any other of his plays beside The High Road.
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The Girl of the Golden West Arrives in New York
The first print of The Girl of the Golden West, the new Lasky-Belasco production which is to be released on January 4th, and which will have its first New York presentation at the Strand Theater on January 3d, has arrived in New York. The work of making the additional prints for distribution through the Paramount is already under way. The Girl of the Golden West is in five reels. The production was made under the direction of Cecil B. De Mille. The three leading roles of the “Girl,” Ramerrez (the road-agent), and the “Sheriff” are played respectively by Mabel Van Buren, House Peters and Theodore Roberts. Both Miss Van Buren and Mr. Roberts have appeared in other Lasky productions, but this is the first picture for the firm in which Mr. Peters has played.
Collection: Moving Picture World, January 1915