Volume II: Filmography

SHE WANTED TO MARRY A HERO

April 29, 1910 (Friday)

Length: 1,000 feet totally (split with The Cigars His Wife Bought at the end)

Character: Drama

Cast: Anna Rosemond (hero-seeking girl), Bernard Randall

Note: A few notices gave an erroneous release date of April 22, 1910 for this film.

ARTICLE, The New York Dramatic Mirror, April 23, 1910:

"Tiny Marie Eline, who appeared as the juvenile Sherlock Holmes in A 29-Cent Robbery, is slated for early use in the production of another subject by the Thanhouser Company. The Thanhouser issues for Friday, April 29, will have a strong comedy flavor, as the titles will indicate. They are She Wanted to Marry a Hero and The Cigars His Wife Bought Him." (An expanded commentary with the same theme, from The Moving Picture World, is reprinted under the A 29-Cent Robbery listing.)

ARTICLE, The Moving Picture World, April 23, 1910:

"[This film is] a lesson and a warning to young women who delve too deeply into Laura Jean Libbey. It's nice enough to read 'love stories' occasionally, but don't devour them until they influence and bewilder you. The heroine in the picture wishes she hadn't. The Libbey yarns made her throw over her commonplace sweetheart and seek a heroic one, like those Miss Libbey writes about. Her search proved to her that no hero is perfect and book heroes are fakes, so she concludes that her original sweetheart, in spite of being unheroic and unromantic, is good enough for her. Anna Rosemond plays the hero-seeking girl."

ARTICLE, The Moving Picture World, May 14, 1910:

"Oh the critics! Sometimes even they must make mistakes and subject themselves to criticism! Why not? Let the worm turn. In a theatrical journal's critique of the Thanhouser reel carrying the comedies She Wanted to Marry a Hero and The Cigars His Wife Bought, it was solemnly asserted that the same woman hadn't ought to play the lead in both subjects. Shucks! The critic should clean his spectacles. The leading lady in She Wanted to Marry a Hero was Miss Rosemond and the leading lady in the cigar picture was Miss Gloria Gallop, two entirely different persons in face, form and action. Had the figures been diminutive on the screen there may have been an excuse for the reviewers error, but as the Thanhouser way in picture making calls for 'large figures,' via the close-to-camera method, the mistake is unpardonable - in a critic!"

SYNOPSIS, The Moving Picture World, April 30, 1910:

"Elsie Plush was a dime novel fiend - Laura Jean [Libbey] kind, you know - and it was her boast that there wasn't a thriller published that she hadn't read. In the present Thanhouser picture she purchases a copy of Miss Libbey's A Great Hero and instantly falls in love with the hero in the book. She forthwith proceeds to measure up the abilities of George Mild, her beau, with those of the Libbey hero, and finds that George falls short. When George proposes, Elsie so far forgets the Libbey hero as to accept George. Then the Libbey hero recurs to her - and it is all off with George. She tells him that he is a worthy enough young man, but he isn't a hero. He is unromantic and ordinary and she knew she couldn't live 'happily ever after' with anyone but a full fledged hero - like the one in Laura Jean's book.

"Then Elsie meets her hero. He is the handsome military man, resplendent in gold lace and lofty airs. Elsie was pleased to take a stroll with him. He seems all that a hero should be until Elsie falls from a bridge into dangerous depths, when the bold soldier - calls for help! So when an athlete responds and rescues Elsie, she scorns the unheroic man of war and gives the athlete her arm.

"But the athlete has his weak points, and one of them is inability to manage a horse. Hence when he tries to drive Elsie's horse the animal promptly runs away! Luckily an expert horseman happens along, stops the horse - and basks in Elsie's smile. HE is a REAL hero! Elsie ignores the athlete. The clever horseman takes the seat the athlete has vacated and guides the horse to Elsie's home. But while handy with the reins the horseman is unhandy with his fists, and in an altercation with the pugilist is pounded and pummeled to a finish - right before Elsie's astonished eyes. Leaving the horseman rubbing his bruises, the hero-seeker marches off with the victorious shoulder-hitter.

"An escaped lunatic enters on the scene and the pugilist loses his nerve. Fleeing, he leaves Elsie at the mercy of the maniac. Suddenly she observes a frightened look in the maniac's eyes and turns her head to see a hypnotist approaching and cowing the lunatic. The hypnotist succeeds in leading the maniac back to the asylum, and then joins Elsie, who invites the professor to escort her home. The man of the powerful gaze carefully accepts and Elsie is sure that she has found the perfect hero until a footpad sticks a revolver under the professor's nose and snarls, 'Everything around yer!' In vain does the professor exert his hypnotic power - the gun continues in dangerous proximity, and the man behind it means business. So the hypnotist shells up like an ordinary mortal and Elsie loses another ideal - and her jewelry! The policeman who frightens off the highwayman is a sure-enough hero - but investigation shows a wife and five youngsters at home! To add to her troubles, Elsie's pocketbook is lifted by heroic-looking Hamlet who needed the money. Elsie concludes that no hero is perfect and that book heroes are fake, so when plain, ordinary George swings by in his new Sunday suit, she tells him he's good enough for her, and he slips a gold band on her shapely finger, and - well, what more do you want?"

REVIEW, The Morning Telegraph, May 1, 1910:

"This woman would marry only a hero. It seems, however, that when one performed some heroic feat and another opportunity to display his bravery presented itself, he would get 'cold feet.' She finally meets a man who comes up to her ideals - a policeman - but he is married and has five children. She therefore goes back to her first lover. The story is well told, but next time the actress jumps in the water and the fellow jumps in after her to save her life, let them come out wet. When they get out of the water in this film they are as dry as before they jumped in."

REVIEW, The Moving Picture World, May 14, 1910:

"A nice little moral that is not very closely concealed in this picture. It may be well to read love stories, but the hot-house type is quite apt to create dangerous ideas in the minds of impressionable girls, and when this one throws over her honest sweetheart for a hero, like those in the novels, she begins a string of troubles that teach her a lesson. Perhaps the exhibition of these troubles in the film will point out the danger of this method to others similarly afflicted."

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