The Star Prince

A poor woodcutter finds a baby in the woods and take the child home, thinking him a star prince. A few years later, grown into 8-year-old Zoe Rae, he is confronted with a beggar woman who is actually his mother. He rejects her, and a fairy curses him. He decides he needs to find the beggar and apologize, so he goes on a quest, meeting a princess and the dwarf who wants to marry her.

Madeline Brandeis' film is largely populated by children who wander around a fairy tale landscape of woods, poverty, ugly old people and castles, with a few cute animals thrown in for audiences to ooh over. It has the rhythms and details of a fairy tale, and the editing is pretty good for 1918. Mrs. Brandeis would produce one other film, but her career seems to have moved into books, She would write a dozen or more childrens' books, most of which would center around a youngster who is called "Little" in the title. She would die in 1937 at age 39.