The Heiress
(1911) United States of America
B&W : One reel / 297 metres
Directed by Lois Weber and Phillips Smalley
Cast: Lois Weber [Mrs. Browne, the heiress], Phillips Smalley [Mrs. Browne’s suitor]
Rex Film Company production; distributed by Motion Picture Distributing & Sales Company. / Released 6 April 1911. / Standard 35mm spherical 1.33:1 format.
Drama.
Synopsis: [?] [From The Moving Picture World]? Mrs. Browne has three admirers. One is a poor man, one aspires to be a fortune hunter and the third is one of those bogus counts. She causes to be inserted in the newspapers that she has met with an accident that will disfigure her for life, and also that her financial standing is swept away by speculation. Then she writes her three admirers, informing them that they can consider her double misfortune as a release from their attentions. She receives three replies to her communications. The fortune hunter and the bogus count write of their regrets over her misfortune and thank her for her consideration of them. The poor man calls on her with the intention of doing his utmost to diminish her grief, but his mission is at once changed for he finds her hale and hearty with a bankroll as healthy as herself. Of course, the newspaper item at once takes a more romantic shade, that of the engagement notice of Mrs. Browne and the only man who wooed her and got her fortune.
Reviews: [The Moving Picture World, 22 April 1911, page ?] No matter how many times a story of this character may be told it always seems to interest. The Rex actors have told it well in this instance, and the mechanical department has assisted with a good series of photographs. For a well-known heiress to give out fake information that her beauty or fortune has disappeared is common in stories. But to make it doubly strong and say that both good looks and money are gone is working it pretty hard. However, the poor man of the three suitors, the only one of them who might have been expected to want gold, responds nobly and gets the woman, her good looks unspoiled and her bankroll intact. Such stories are not dramatic. But there is a human touch about them that is always interesting and an audience will watch such a picture and possibly applaud it, when one with strong dramatic situations will be received in silence.
Survival status: (unknown)
Current rights holder: Public domain [USA].
Listing updated: 24 October 2022.
References: Tarbox-Lost p. 236 : Website-IMDb.
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