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Lillian Gish (right).
Photograph: Silent Era image collection.
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The Hunchback
(1914) United States of America
B&W : Two reels
Directed by W. Christy Cabanne (William Christy Cabanne)
Cast: Frank Turner (F.A. Turner) [a hunchback peddler], Lillian Gish [a young orphan], William Garwood [a young prospector], Tom Haverly [the father], Edna Mae Wilson [the orphan, as a child]
The Majestic Motion Picture Company production; distributed by Mutual Film Corporation. / Scenario by Anita Loos. / Released 12 April 1914. / Standard 35mm spherical 1.33:1 format.
Drama.
Synopsis: [?] [From The Moving Picture World]? “The Hunchback” earns a scanty living as a tinker, traveling from house to house, but on account of his deformity, there is no one who cares for him. Although a great lover of children, they flee at his approach. Taking pity on a little girl whose doll has been broken, he spends all his earnings to replace her plaything, and in consequence, the people with whom he boards, order him out. Tired and despairing, he gets, unobserved, into a freight car, and is carried to a western mining town. There the wanderer finds friends in a miner and his little girl. An accident renders the little girl fatherless, and the hunchback brings the child to womanhood. As the years pass the cripple grows to care for his ward, but when he tells her of his love, he finds that it is not returned. The girl falls in love with a young prospector, and the jealous hunchback seeks to take his life, and then weakens in his resolve. Later the prospector is in deadly danger and the hunchback decides to let him die. But when he recalls a promise he made to the girl’s dying father and of his own desire for happiness, he makes the sacrifice and saves the life that means so much to her.
Survival status: (unknown)
Current rights holder: Public domain [USA].
Listing updated: 29 January 2025.
References: Weaver-Twenty p. 145 : Website-IMDb.
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