Volume II: Filmography

AN ASSISTED ELOPEMENT

August 30, 1910 (Tuesday)

Length: 1,000 feet

Character: Comedy

SYNOPSIS, The Moving Picture World, September 3, 1910:

"Glade and Sears are next door neighbors and old friends. Glade has a daughter, while Sears has a son. The young people have never met, being away at school while the old folks have been cementing their friendship. As the two men own adjoining places, they believe that the best thing for the younger people to do is to get married. So they try to bring this about. Gladys Glade and Charlie Sears meet on the train while they are returning home and start a flirtation. Perhaps they would have married in the end, if the old folks hadn't 'butted in.' As it is, they lose all interest in each other. Then the fathers try another tack. They decide to be bitter enemies in public, hoping the opposition will bring the children together. The new plan works like a charm, and Gladys and Charlie, realizing their parents' shortcomings, decide to elope. They do so, much to the satisfaction of Glade and Sears."

REVIEW by Walton, The Moving Picture News, September 10, 1910:

"Here we have the inevitable wig - and in long wanderings we have met one man with hair like that. The film calls for shrieks of laughter; it deserved it, for it is built upon human nature. A story anyone can see and enjoy."

REVIEW, The Moving Picture World, September 10, 1910:

"Possibly more than one elopement has been similarly assisted. At any rate, as soon as the young folks felt opposition they decided to elope, much to the satisfaction of the elders in the game. The picture is high-class comedy and the acting is so true to life that no great stretch of the imagination is required to make the personages seem real."

REVIEW, The New York Dramatic Mirror, September 10, 1910:

"This film story has been done before and by an Independent producer, which prompts the wonder if the Independents would not do well to avoid borrowing - at least from each other. The Thanhouser producers have the excuse, however, in this particular case that the former telling of the story was a sad failure, while this one has pleasing qualities. Two fathers are determined that their children shall wed each other, but the young folks object to such cut and dried procedure, whereat the fathers pretend to quarrel and forbid the children to love, and the perverse youngsters at once elope, assisted secretly by the parents. The trick of having the boy join the girl in her apparent banishment by hiding in her trunk is the one discordant note in an otherwise plausible and human comedy."

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