Volume I: Narrative History

Chapter 10: 1917 Finis

Variety in its edition of September 21, 1917 told of the winding down of activities in New Rochelle:

Edwin Thanhouser is to retire from active participation in the picture field next spring when his present contract with the Thanhouser company expires. The producer did not intend to come back into pictures when he stepped out in 1914, but on his return to this country after a tour of Europe, the death of Charles Hite occurred, and the stockholders requested the former head of the concern again take hold.

The Thanhouser studio at New Rochelle is practically idle now, with no one there except the bookkeeper Note and Mr. Thanhouser. This condition will in all likelihood prevail until the contract runs out.

Lloyd Lonergan, who looms as one of the record holders among the writers for the screen (he having turned out something like 1,500 reels for the company), retired last week, and after spending several months in New York will take a long rest at Cape May, N.J., where he has built a home. Lonergan turned out the first scenario ever produced by the Thanhouser Company and has been with them ever since. He was the writer of the company's most successful serial, The Million Dollar Mystery, which earned over $2,000,000.

At present the Thanhouser Company is on clean velvet, not having any liabilities and a bank balance amounting to more than $50,000. Note

Years later Edwin Thanhouser's son Lloyd would recall: Note "When Dad wound up in 1917 he told the board of directors that they had two alternatives - one to wind up the company, and the second to move to California at great expense. And he recommended that they wind it up."

There remained one more film to distribute. The Heart of Ezra Greer, with Frederick Warde in the title role, was released through the Pathé Exchange on October 7, 1917. Variety printed this commentary:

A Thanhouser feature (Pathé Gold Rooster) with a story, not expertly sustained in interest and with situations that are incongruous, if not improbable.

Ezra Greer (Frederick Warde, featured) is a butler whose daughter is working her way through some sort of co-ed school, certainly not of the standard kind. She has fallen in love with Denbeigh, a youth of means, and at the end of the school term they leave together. After a spell Denbeigh quits the girl to go to New York, ostensibly to obtain permission for their marriage from his guardian. The latter persuades Denbeigh to tarry 'neath the bright lights and to forget marriage for the present. Soon he falls for a female vamp and forgets his first love, which brings fruition with a son, a fact which Denbeigh isn't at first acquainted with.

Ezra in the meantime leaves his employer to seek for his daughter. In his wanderings he stumbles into an impoverished room to find out if a young woman who had just died is his daughter. Coming away he brings along a child who otherwise would have gone to a foundling home. Ezra finds a new berth, the summer cottage of young Denbeigh. The daughter discovering Denbeigh's address takes her offspring thence so that the child will obtain the rightful care from its father. As Ezra also has his foundling child with him, the developed situation has two children in Denbeigh's home originally designed for occasional parties with the vamp. Denbeigh orders the latest kid addition to his establishment sent to a foundling home, but Ezra points out that as it is his child, his duty was clear, that of caring for the kid and finding the mother, to make reparation. Ezra does other things, in fact at the finish he is both butler and boss of the works. Especially so when he finds out it was a daughter Denbeigh had wronged. Rather a mixed assortment of things. The direction is good in spots, but the photography is clear.

Wid's Film and Film Folk had this to say about the final Thanhouser film, although the reviewer did not know that this was to be the last effort bearing the studio's name:

This will run along on the screen before the average fan without making any impression whatever except that it is just movies. We have much footage of the old father searching for his daughter who has been wronged by the wealthy wun [sic; one], and there are many of those convenient twists in the plot that 'just happen,' which lead up to the final result of the girl's father acting as valet to the wealthy guy, with the girl bringing her child to the latter's home to be cared for. The girl then became a nurse in a hospital, which of course made it clear that the child was going to get caught in an accident on the finish which would bring father, daughter and grandfather together at the bedside, and so it was.

The photography and lighting varied from some very good flashes to some very ordinary bits. We had a few of those bits which are ordinarily termed 'big scenes,' these including a few cabaret shots, etc., but we had many scenes which were poorly photographed and badly grouped, with the result that these bad spots marred the general effect of the production decidedly. They pulled a 'baby vamp' on us who was funny because of her camera-conscious acting, and it was a general fault of most of the players that they were decidedly aware of the fact that it was expected that they act and that they were being photographed.

Frederick Warde, as the old father of the wronged hero, was quite satisfactory, but didn't register anything remarkable, his part really being one of those things that most any reasonably good character man could do just as well. In one place Mr. Warde was shown to a deck of cards with such ease it appeared ridiculous for him to be acting as a valet. He could make a fortune manipulating cards. Those who appeared in support were Leila Frost, G. Forth and Lillian Mueller.

The Box Office Angle: There's nothing about this to lift it out of the ordinary, average program release rut, and I wouldn't advise that you play it unless you are committed to accepting Pathé productions. If you must play it, I'd go very easy in making any references to production and story, depending almost entirely upon the possible interest in the work of Mr. Warde, who has had one or two good productions and is generally remembered as having been a prominent figure on the stage. Don't be misled into boosting the baby vamp, because she is funny, and there is no element except a couple of rather cute kids worthy of any attention.

By this time the Thanhouser Film Corporation was largely forgotten, as were Biograph, Lubin, Kalem, Edison, and other great studios of an earlier era. Such names as Lasky, Paramount, Keystone, Chaplin, Fairbanks, Pickford, Sennett, and Fox were splashed across the trade publications. California dominated the industry, and production on the East Coast, primarily in Northern New Jersey, was only a shadow of what it had been several years before. Few in the industry remembered the struggle of the Independents against the Trust, and few recalled that in 1910 and 1911 Edwin Thanhouser was acclaimed as one of the great innovators in the industry. Disillusionment with the changes wrought in the film industry since that time and symptoms of angina which manifested themselves in late 1917 Note made Edwin Thanhouser determined not to look back. "The Wizard of New Rochelle" had his sights set on retirement and was counting the days until his contract expired in 1918. Sic transit gloria mundi.