Volume II: Filmography

HIS GUARDIAN AUTO

(Falstaff)

June 11, 1915 (Friday)

Length: 1 reel (1,025 feet)

Character: Comedy

Directors: John Harvey and Arthur Ellery

Cast: James Cruze (Billy Budd, the auto owner), Ethyle Cooke (Flossie Footlights), Marguerite Snow (the country girl)

ARTICLE, Reel Life, June 12, 1915:

"His Guardian Auto, a Falstaff comedy, produced by the Thanhouser Company, is unique among recent photoplays. For a good, fresh laugh over a perfectly original plot and a crop of jokes which never have been tried on any public before, His Guardian Auto leads the new funny films. The idea of an automobile setting to work to reform its fast, young owner is a novel one to start with. And every situation that follows has the flavor of the unexpected, as well as being a whimsical parody on common, ordinary human nature."

SYNOPSIS, Reel Life, May 29, 1915:

"Everybody agrees that Billy Budd should settle down. But no one has the nerve to tell him so. Billy Budd says everybody is fast. He travels in fast company, and he drives a fast automobile. It really is a pity! But who will undertake to reform him? It does not occur to anybody that Billy's auto has constituted itself his guardian spirit. Yet the car, apart from Billy's influence, really is a remarkably good sort. One evening its owner leads it into evil ways. Stopping at a roadside inn to get some wine for himself and some gasoline for the auto, he finds the supply of gasoline has run out. Billy has had a lively day. So he reasons that if champagne be good for him it will do also for the auto. He loads up the machine with wine and starts off on a record run.

"Now it was Billy's guardian's first drunk - and Billy still is curdling the blood of his friends telling the stunts that reeling car went through. He describes the rest of the performance in this way: 'When I woke up in the morning I was in bed and the auto was asleep on the floor. I sent for some ice water and gave myself and the car a nice, cool drink. Then I bound up my head with a cloth and fixed a bandage for the car's radiator. That car was grateful, just like a human. That afternoon when I went outside, it came running up to me exactly like a sheep dog. It did everything except wag its name plate. I was talking with Flossie Footlights at the time and I invited her to take a ride. But the auto whizzed off before she could set foot in the machine. It took me right out in the country and drew up before the prettiest farm girl you ever would hope to see. She smiled at me. And that was the beginning of the good citizen I've been ever since."

REVIEW, The Moving Picture World, June 19, 1915:

"James Cruze appears in this as the owner of a racing auto. He is wild and drives the machine wildly, using champagne for power purposes. His eccentric ride was amusing. The number as a whole is just a whimsical novelty and makes a good offering of its type."

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