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Lady Audley’s Secret
(1912) United States of America
B&W : Short film
Directed by Herbert Brenon and Otis Turner
Cast: King Baggot [George Talboys], Jane Fearnley [Lady Audley], William E. Shay [Sir Robert Audley], William J. Welsh (William Welsh) [Sir Michael], William R. Daly (William Robert Daly) [Luke Marks], Violet Horner [Clarice]
Independent Moving Pictures Company, Incorporated [IMP] production; distributed by Motion Picture Distributing & Sales Company. / Scenario by Herbert Brenon, from the novel Lady Audley’s Secret by M.E. Braddon (Mary Elizabeth Bradden Maxwell). / Released 16 May 1912. / Standard 35mm spherical 1.33:1 format. / The film was rereleased in the USA by The Universal Film Manufacturing Company, Incorporated, in 1916. The novel was subsequently filmed as Lady Audley’s Secret (1915).
Drama.
Synopsis: [?] From The Moving Picture World]? Sir Robert Audley, while a good and honorable man, has no social ambitions, and after a time Lady Audley’s life becomes monotonous, so she devises a scheme which she believes will be of advantage to her. While her husband is away from home on a long trip, she plans to become suddenly ill and die; this is successful, and enables her to appear under another name. She next ensnares a wealthy nobleman, Sir Michael, and at last sees her dream about to be realized. When Sir Robert returns, he penetrates her disguise and threatens to expose the ruse. Failing to persuade him to keep silent, she determines to put him out of the way forever. For this purpose an old well in the Abbey Court grounds is used; there Sir Robert is supposed to have fallen to his death, but a villager whispers her secret about. Sir Michael's son denounces her but his father is completely infatuated, and therefore gives no credence to the rumor and orders his son from his home. Through a chain of circumstances Lady Audley succeeds in getting her enemies under one roof, a quaint old English inn. Here the desperate creature plans to destroy them all. The dread cry of fire rings out on the still village air, and heroic rescues alone save her victims from a horrible death. Confronted by them on the threshold of the castle, just as she fancied all evidence against her had been consigned to the flames, Lady Audley collapses and insanity mercifully closes the portals of her distorted mind.
Survival status: (unknown)
Current rights holder: Public domain [USA].
Listing updated: 24 December 2024.
References: Blum-Silent p. 30 : Website-IMDb.
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