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I’m Glad My Boy Grew Up to Be a Soldier
(1915) United States of America
B&W : Four reels
Directed by Frank Beal
Cast: Harry Mestayer [Jerry Warrington], Eugenie Besserer [Mrs. Warrington], Harry De Vere [James Warrington], Guy Oliver [Frank Archer], Anna Luther [Mercy Archer]
The Selig Polyscope Company, Incorporated, production; distributed by V-L-S-E, Incorporated [A Red Seal Play]. / Scenario by Gilson Willets, inspired by the song “I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier” by Al Piantadosi (music) and Alfred Bryan (lyrics). / © 16 November 1915 by The Selig Polyscope Company, Incorporated [LP6998]. Released 13 December 1915. / Standard 35mm spherical 1.33:1 format. / Working title: I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier.
Drama: War.
Synopsis: [?] [From The Moving Picture World]? James Warrington, a successful architect, is fortunate in the possession of a happy home presided over by a loving wife and gladdened by the presence of a fine young son, Jerry Warrington. When the morning newspaper is thrown into the home carrying in staring headlines the news that war has been declared, the husband hides the newspaper and goes to his office. Frank Archer is a partner of James Warrington, and when Warrington reaches the office. Archer informs him that he, Archer, has determined to enlist as a volunteer. Archer tells Warrington that he, too, should enlist. Warrington hesitates, thinking of his wife and little son. Then his duty confronts him and he agrees to join a volunteer regiment with Archer. Then comes the first note, of sadness, for Warrington tells his wife that he has enlisted. Archer lives with his little daughter, Mercy, in a house adjoining that occupied by the Warringtons. He and his daughter call at the Warrington home. There Mrs. Warrington pleads with Archer to remember his little daughter and to remain at home, but he answers firmly that it is his duty as well as Warrington's duty to go to the firing line. The bugler sounds the “assembly” and the regiment which includes Warrington and Archer, marches away and Mrs. Warrington watches with tear-dimmed eyes. Time passes. Battles have been won and lost, and father’s all too brief notes to little Jerry and his mother cease. Then one day Archer arrives home. He has lost an arm. His little daughter Mercy is overjoyed that Papa has returned home again. Archer calls on Mrs. Warrington. As little Jerry and Mercy play together in the yard, Archer tells Mrs. Warrington of the heroic death of her husband. Later the newspaper headlines declare that peace has been restored. Seventeen years pass, and Jerry has grown to young manhood and Mercy has blossomed into a beautiful young woman. Their childish affection has grown apace and they are sweethearts. Again comes the morning paper into the Warrington home. Mrs. Warrington reads the fateful headlines stating that after seventeen years of peace, war has again been declared and that invaders have landed upon our coast. The dawn of despair comes to the loving mother. She resolves to hide the newspaper from Jerry. But bulletin boards everywhere confront Jerry, and they state that volunteer regiments will be equipped immediately to go at once to the front. At the office, Jerry tells Archer, “It is my duty to enlist.” He repairs to his home to tell his mother. She reels when she hears the news. She goes to her husband's portrait: “I lost him in war. I cannot lose you, too, my boy. Promise not to enlist.” But Jerry’s determination is unshaken. As war takes its toll, Mercy goes to the front as a Red Cross Nurse, while at home Jerry’s mother creeps to the attic and fondles the toys belonging to Jerry when he was a child. One day Mercy Archer returns. With her father she goes to Mrs. Warrington’s home. Mercy, too, tells a story just as her father told one seventeen years before. And as Jerry’s mother sits gazing grief stricken into the fireplace in her cottage, oblivious of the comforting arms of Mercy, there comes a vision of a great battleship firing a broadside of guns which later dissolves into a great threshing harvesting machine at work, implying peace and industry.
Survival status: (unknown)
Current rights holder: Public domain [USA].
Listing updated: 31 December 2024.
References: Tarbox-Lost pp. 222, 252, 260 : ClasIm-223 p. 47 : Website-AFI; Website-IMDb.
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