Volume II: Filmography

THE SNARE OF FATE

British release title: FATE

June 17, 1913 (Tuesday)

Length: 2 reels

Character: Drama

Scenario: Lloyd F. Lonergan

Cast: James Cruze (Mr. Jenks, the usurer), Florence LaBadie (Mary Drent, the young wife and mother), Sidney Blair

Notes: 1. This film was originally scheduled for release on June 17, 1913, then the scheduled release date was moved forward to June 10, 1913, but finally back to its original date. 2. An expanded story by Virginia West, based upon the plot synopsis, appeared in The Moving Picture News, issue of June 14, 1913.

SYNOPSIS, The Moving Picture World, June 21, 1913:

When her widowed mother became afflicted with a severe illness, the young stenographer's scanty savings were quickly eaten up by medicine and doctor bills. She then borrowed money from a loan shark, and the interest on this loan became a heavy drain on her small salary. Additional funds were needed, but the creditor refused to advance any more except that she become his wife. She repulsed him, but later, to save her mother, she consented. Her husband was a brute; his only thought being for gold. One day the wife met a poor woman in the park weeping bitterly. She learned that the woman was about to lose all her belongings to pay the extortionate claims of a loan shark, who was her husband. The wife took the woman to her husband's office, but she only met with his usual harshness and he told the woman either pay or take the consequences. The next day the wife left her husband, taking her little boy with her. The husband was glad of this because it would save him money. The loan shark owned property, and when the agent came and told him that he could not collect the tenant's rent, he ordered the family put out. Later, while walking near his tenement houses, he was stricken with paralysis, and fell dumb and helpless in the doorway.

A tenant, who he had ordered out, but who did not know the landlord, took him into his squalid home and ministered to him. The landlord, unable to speak, could not make his identity known and the next morning as the tenant's belongings were being removed, the landlord was placed upon a mattress and carried into the street, where he lay until he was taken to the hospital. His destitute benefactor soon found friends in a seamstress and her little boy, who took them into her home, and when told of the poor stranger, the seamstress went to the hospital to see if she could aid him. She was surprised to learn that the stricken person was her heartless husband. After he died the money reverted to his wife, who was as good to her tenants as her husband was merciless.

REVIEW, The Morning Telegraph, June 22, 1913:

This picture, which has been produced in two reels, represents exceptionally fine work on the part of Florence LaBadie and James Cruze. James Cruze in the role of the usurer marries a young woman from whom he demands this sacrifice in payment for loans advanced by him on a mortgaged salary, into which net the girl has unconsciously slipped in an effort to comfort her sick mother. Life with the usurer becomes unbearable, and taking her child with her she leaves him. One of Cruze's finest scenes occurs where he is represented as yearning for his wife. This affords an excellent opportunity for versatile work. The climax of the story comes when the usurer, who has just ordered the eviction of a tenant in the slums, falls on the street with a stroke of paralysis and is carried into this very home, where, unable to speak to establish his identity, he is carried forth into the street with the miserable furnishings of the room and removed later to a hospital. His wife, coming by chance upon a woman weeping in the street, her sympathy is directed toward her and she is taken to the hospital to investigate the condition of the sufferer, whom she recognizes as her own husband, who dies shortly afterward.

REVIEW, The Moving Picture World, June 21, 1913:

A two-reel offering which stands out well in comparison with many recent double numbers. James Cruze gives a fine characterization of the unscrupulous usurer, who is by a turn of fate evicted from one of his own tenement houses by his own order. Florence LaBadie appears to advantage also in the part of the young wife. The story covers a period of six years and is very nicely worked out. The scenes are in harmony with the spirit of the story and the photography is good. A desirable release.

REVIEW by Louis Reeves Harrison, The Moving Picture World, June 21, 1913:

This photodrama marks a distinct advance in Thanhouser production - it is superior in motive to any release I have ever seen from that company - and, if carried a little further, it might easily have ranked among the masterpieces of the day. It apparently deals with a situation now engaging the attention of the Russell Sage Foundation in depicting the operation of a loan shark, but the deeper motive is a finer one and so modern, so advanced, that I hope it will be treated with tremendous force in the near future. It is cheering to see the tendrils out for the most powerful themes in stories of human life of today. Further than this, the play is well acted, is delightfully artistic in the selection of exteriors, and exhibits a bold spirit of leadership in this period of feeble-minded subservience to what may have served some past generation but which has no bearing on this one. It is clean, fearless, and very much to the point.

The story involves a sacrificial marriage, but the latter is not forced nor illogical. Miss Flo LaBadie plays with delicacy and sympathetic intelligence the role of the young wife and mother united by force of circumstances to a morally base and miserly usurer. The latter role is admirably depicted by James Cruze. When the realization comes to her that her child may have his ignoble example to follow, she leaves her husband to his miserable practices, never to return. At this point was a magnificent opportunity for double exposure, showing the workings of the young wife's mind, her picturing of the influence of sordid environment on her child as contrasted with that of her superior ideals. The mother who is young of heart and near her child in simplicity of character knows instinctively that it is almost impossible to teach little ones even the elements of adult morality - the tiny copycats will act according to the influences brought to bear upon them when not responding to the insistent demands of their primitive hearts. The mother in this case left her husband rather than have her child at the mercy of hideous surroundings. That was her sole motive, and the idea is a beautiful one.

She grasped the fact that her community was outreaching the vile practices of her husband and set about bravely to train her offspring according to the opinions and customs of enlightenment. Her conduct furnishes an excellent example to the producers of moving pictures - their product needs a similar schooling. She would not have the child's spiritual virginity tainted by what the father was doing, and it is that quality in creators of the human race that we dwell most fondly upon when some dim and haunting memory of our own mothers reaches us like a far-off strain of exquisite music. We watch the usurer thrive financially while sinking into greater depths of moral decadence, until a peculiar accident - he is stricken with partial paralysis when unknown in the house of a tenant about to be evicted - brings about a strong situation. Treated with kindness by the poor people he was about to deprive of a home, he is mistaken by the evictors for an inmate and dumped into the street with the furniture. He struggles to speak, but is unable to utter a sound. The story is consistently portrayed and brought to an artistic conclusion.

REVIEW, The New York Dramatic Mirror, June 25, 1913:

Well done and possessing an original and effective situation, this two-part drama goes over successfully. Moreover, Florence LaBadie does some strikingly good playing - the best we have observed. The story starts conventionally. The young woman, in the power of a usurer, consents to marry him in order to get money for her sick mother. Unhappy years pass and the wife leaves the usurer with her baby. Here is the out-of-the-ordinary situation. The usurer, after ordering the occupants of his tenement dispossessed, goes to the building to demand back rents. He falls with a paralytic stroke, dumb and helpless. The tenants are caring for him when they are dispossessed. The usurer is unable to make them understand and is thrown - by an odd turn of fate on his own orders - into the street upon a mattress. Later he is carted away - almost dead - to the hospital. Here he realizes his own cruelty and, when his wife comes to him, tears up a will in which he had disinherited her. The Snare of Fate is one of the best Independent releases in some time. Miss LaBadie is excellent, and James Cruze is effective as the usurer. The direction is satisfactory.

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June 20, 1913 (Friday)

No release because of two-reeler of preceding Tuesday, noted a Thanhouser advertisement.

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