Volume II: Filmography

THE MAD HERMIT

August 9, 1910 (Tuesday)

Length: 1,000 feet

Character: Drama

Director: Barry O'Neil

Cameraman: Blair Smith

Notes: 1. In an interview published in The Standard-Star, New Rochelle, June 13, 1938, Edwin Thanhouser recalled that The Mad Hermit was the first film produced by that firm. It was not the first film released (that designation goes to The Actor's Children, issued on March 15, 1910). The same article noted that, by hindsight, Edwin Thanhouser considered that "It was a rather lamentable affair. It included everything from murder through robbery and a love story. It boasted enough material for 15 plots." The same account noted that approximately 20 people, "including a cameraman from the Edison Company and a director taken from one of Thanhouser's theatrical companies," made the film. 2. Curiously, an apparently unrelated three-reel Bison film released in January 1914 had the same title.

ADVERTISEMENT, The Moving Picture World, August 13, 1910:

"The theme of the wrath of a woman scorned having been worn threadbare by the moving picture producer, Thanhouser producers here undertake to show the wrath of a MAN scorned - a bold move but a popular one. For the man deceived in love can be as wrathy as a woman in that situation - and, better, the idea is new and hasn't been worked to death. In this you have the ideal warm weather release with a splendid abundance of the kind of country scenes that cool and comfort a summer patron."

ARTICLE, The Moving Picture News, August 6, 1910:

"The Mad Hermit, released by Thanhouser on Tuesday, August 9, is an odd picture in that the theme is new. At least this is true to the best knowledge of the producers. In a nutshell, the theme is this: instead of 'the wrath of a woman scorned,' consider the wrath of a man scorned. It is just as wrathy a wrath and has just as many dramatic possibilities. How best utilize them? Why, let the man's wrath work out naturally and easily. So the mad hermit is given good reason for his madness and good reason for his evolution from simple farmer to world-weary hermit. His wrath evolves reasonably. Certainly, a loving husband and father would grow up bitter at the civilization that robbed him of his wife and child, and, certainly, his bitterness would increase, when searching for his loved ones, he veritably found every hand against him. Little wonder he would have nothing of the world and its beings! Little wonder his wrath made him a hermit!"

SYNOPSIS, The Moving Picture World, August 13, 1910:

"The story centers on Harry Willard, a plodding farmer. A city gentleman promises Harry's frivolous wife a life of ease and luxury - and it is the old, old story. She takes her tiny daughter, Agnes, with her, and leaves a note announcing the fact for Harry. The young farmer, who loves his wife and child with an all-consuming love, loses his reason as he reads the announcement of his betrayal. Although without the bare means for his subsistence, he searches for days for his loved ones. Eventually the strain, mental and physical, tells on him - he comes out of it all a maniac. His wrath takes the form of an aversion to all mankind. He wants to forget the world that has treated him so ill - he decides to become a hermit and betakes himself to a desolate cave, where he spends the years execrating humanity. A quarter century goes by.

"Rarely in that time does he venture on beaten paths for fear that he may meet a hated human, but one day he forgets his resolve long enough to cross a carriage drive. He hears the clatter of hooves and sights a horse tearing toward him with a swaying carriage and screaming occupants - runaway! As the carriage passes by him, a woman flings a bundle to him; he catches it and finds it a pink and white bit of humanity. Dazed he runs into the wilderness with a baby and makes for his cave. Arrived at the cave the maniac resolves to even his score with society by taking the babe's life. But his eyes light on the baby's locket and his hand is stayed. For the locket bears a picture of the child of the wife who betrayed him!

"The parents of the baby have miraculously escaped death in the crash of their carriage and trace the strange creature who rescued the child to his lair. They arrive as he ponders upon the picture in the locket and tries to recall the original of it. The babe is the daughter of the original and its mother the hermit's daughter, Agnes - the one-time tot whom the deserting wife took with her. A wife and mother, she is quite a mature woman now - but her features are unchanged. The face appears familiar to the hermit and he tries to place it. Eventually he succeeds. The shock of recognition dazes him - and changes him. The light of sanity returns to his eyes. His reason is restored. He takes to his breast the daughter whom he had lost and found again. She takes him from his forest home and back to the civilization that had tricked him. But the kindly care and love his daughter bestows on him to act in a measure as a recompense for the wrong done him in the long ago, and with the passing years the bitterness passes from his being. The picture touches the heartstrings; it will please to a certainty."

REVIEW, The Moving Picture World, August 20, 1910:

"A picture which touches the heart and arouses the strongest emotions. It can be readily understood how a man might become a maniac under such circumstances. The loss of a wife and daughter is sufficient to overthrow reason. That a man should be a hermit afterward seems not unusual. Then comes the excitement of the runaway, the rescue of the baby and the discovery of his daughter, with returning reason and love to follow during his declining years. The emotions will be strongly aroused by this picture, and that will make it popular. Whatever touches the heart is always popular, and this seems to appeal with unusual power."

REVIEW, The New York Dramatic Mirror, August 20, 1910:

"The mad hermit is a farmer whose wife with her child ran away with a city man 25 years before, as we are shown in the introductory scenes. For 25 years he lives in a cave, until one day, venturing near a highway, he sees a runaway team drawing a carriage. As the carriage passes, a woman throws a bundle to him and in it he finds a baby which he carries to his cave with an insane desire to kill it. But a portrait in a locket stays his hand. It reminds him of his wife. It is the picture of his grown-up daughter, the mother of the baby. The original soon presents herself, after which his restoration to reason is affected in a very well acted scene. The picture proves strongly interesting."

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