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Winning the Widow
(1915) United States of America
B&W : Short film
Directed by Walter Coyle (Walter V. Coyle)
Cast: Gretchen Hartman [the widow], Alan Hale [the bachelor], Adelaide Comer [the child]
Biograph Company production; distributed by The General Film Company, Incorporated. / Released 30 September 1915. / Standard 35mm spherical 1.33:1 format.
Comedy-Drama.
Synopsis: [?] [From The Moving Picture World]? The bachelor arrives at the summer boarding house and is assigned to a room. Shortly afterward, he hears a child crying, locates the sound in the adjoining room, and enters. The child stops crying when he soothes it, but breaks out again as soon as he puts it down, so he is forced to continue his attentions. The proceedings are interrupted by the return of the child’s mother, a dashing young widow, who gives him the frozen look. Nothing daunted, he lays siege to her heart, principally through the child, whom he endeavors to amuse. She turns him down flat, however, when he proposes. Determined to win her, he plots to kidnap her child and hold it as hostage until she names the day. He bribes a shoe clerk, whom he has met at the boarding house, to get the child for him. The clerk fulfills his part of the bargain and obtains the promised reward of $500. The bachelor takes the child to a furnished cottage which he has rented, and turns it over to the care of a hired nurse. But the nurse becomes suspicious, and fearing to be involved in the kidnapping, throws up her job. The bachelor is forced to look after the child himself. Each day he scans the agony column of the paper, in which he has warned the widow to advertise that she will be his. On the fourth day he can stand it no longer, and is on the point of going to the widow when she comes to him, accompanied by the shoe clerk, whom she introduces as her husband. Before he can recover his breath, she thanks him sweetly for having taken care of her baby during the honeymoon, and for the five hundred dollars which came in so handy for expenses.
Survival status: (unknown)
Current rights holder: Public domain [USA].
Listing updated: 13 September 2023.
References: Spehr-American p. 4 : Website-IMDb.
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