Volume II: Filmography

TANGLED LIVES

September 13, 1910 (Tuesday)

Length: 1,000 feet

Character: Drama

SYNOPSIS, The Bioscope, December 22, 1910:

"A shortage is discovered in the accounts of John Hill, a young bank cashier. The manager of the bank agrees to give him three days' time in which to make good the shortage. John confides in his young wife, May, and a young reporter interviews May about her husband's shortage. He becomes interested in the plucky young woman, and decides to suppress the story. The husband fails to raise the money, and leaves his clothes, with a note telling of his intended suicide, on a wharf at the water's edge. After five years the young reporter wins May for his bride. On the day of their wedding, John is attracted to the house where the ceremony is to take place. Hearing of the many rich gifts which the bride has received, he enters the house, and witnesses a love scene between the young reporter and his (John's) wife. He finds it impossible to escape by the way he entered, and attempts to leave by the floor window, falls to the ground and is killed. Here Hastings finds him, and has the body carried away, and leads May to the altar."

REVIEW by Walton, The Moving Picture News, September 24, 1910:

"Another variant of Enoch Arden, with a newspaperman interjected. The resurrected undesirable husband is cleverly eliminated. The coincidences are too miraculous to suit a plain newspaperman."

REVIEW, The Moving Picture World, September 24, 1910:

"A dramatic recital of what might occur, provided circumstances were propitious, or otherwise, as the case may be. The tangle in these lives becomes so complicated that only the death of the one chiefly responsible for it can untie the twists which make themselves so conspicuous. Fortunately the innocent woman is spared the horror of her former husband's death, while her lover can at least feel sure that she really belongs to him. It is a graphic illustration of conditions which might arise almost any time, and develops an interestingly dramatic story as it proceeds."

REVIEW, The New York Dramatic Mirror, September 21, 1910:

"This story in very nearly the same form has been told before in the films, but the Thanhouser people have done it fairly well and added a few details which, while not quite logical, give it some new interest. A bank clerk becomes a defaulter and pretends to commit suicide by drowning, thus effecting his escape. Reporters are 'Johnny on the spot' so promptly that we cannot understand how they missed seeing the escaping man, but they take the suicide for fact, and later one of the reporters marries the supposed widow. On the wedding night the husband returns as a tramp, but in escaping again falls out of a window and kills himself. The reporter has no difficulty in keeping the wife from seeing the body, although she comes within a few feet of it, and the wedding ceremony goes merrily on."

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