The Actor's Children

THE ACTOR'S CHILDREN was the first production of the Thanhouser Company and, for the era, it is technically advanced, with excellent filmic staging -- if a trifle stolid in terms of camera placement -- decent acting and a nice bit of a story -- too much story for thirteen minutes, truth be told, as an actor's play closes and comes home to find his children gone, when suddenly a relative dies and leave him a lot of money..... all courtesy of longtime Thanhouser writer and brother-in-law Lloyd Lonergan. The film makes use of the then-current method of titles as chapter headings, a technique that would continue for another two or three years.

Thanhouser got off to a fast start, sending copies of this film out to dealers on speculation, which caused them to write back that they had existing relationships with distributors, all part of the one-year-old Patents Trust. Thanhouser's ambition would get the better of him in short order, but he produced some remarkably advanced pictures and this one presages some interesting work.

A most excellent beginning for a new concern. The story is clear and clean and the acting very good indeed in some scenes. There is, however, too much evidence of the production having been put on by a man whose experience has been gained on the living stage. Cutting out one or two scenes and substituting printed titles would improve the film and less time should be given to the supposedly speaking parts. No doubt this is also evident to the producer after seeing the story on the screen, where action speaks louder than words, and the fault will be remedied in the future. In fact it has already been much corrected in "St. Elmo," the second picture of the new company, to be issued this week. In photography the work ranks well with that of older concerns and is far superior to some. "The Actor's Children" is a film that will please. - The Moving Picture World, March 19, 1910

Thanhouser's first film is a decent enough effort, although it follows the template laid out by Griffith at Biograph a little too closely and doesn't really have enough plot to fill out its short running time. Thanhouser defied Thomas Edison's monopolistic Trust and braved violent disruption from the Wizard of Menlo Park's paid thugs to get this movie made, so it deserves some degree of praise.

Don't believe those who claim DW Griffith was the only one turning out great work in the nickelodeon period. Thanhouser had some great output in the 1910s and were off to a great start with THE ACTOR'S CHILDREN, a breezy little movie with sophisticated cinematic storytelling for 1910. The actors are charming and the story, while simple, is fast-paced. Overall, charming work.