Motion Picture News (Apr-Jun 1919)

May 3 , i 9 1 9 2855 yj w w x d x on 11 Jnknown I jOve Exhibitors who are going to show '* The Unknown Love " should say to the public plainly that this is a picture with the war setting — a picture that would be impossible without the war — but still a distinctly after the war picture in its treatment. There is no reason why this should not be stated incidentally in your exploitation. But we would not suggest that you label this Not a war picture.'' Show what it really is by your selling talk. The thing that people want now to come out of the •war so far as pictures is concerned are visualizations of great loves or of the lighter and humorous elements. W ith a romance the setting of the war brings the action right up to the moment and makes it all the more gripping. So after we had displayed the name of the picture, those of the two stars, Dolores Cassinelli and E. K. Lincoln, and then the name of its director and author. Leonee Perrett who created " Lafayette, We Come'' we would jump right into the selling argument and put over the appeal of the picture so convincingly that all will NOW here is the story: It opens at thesummer home of John Parker, a retired sea captain where his beautiful daughter, Doris, is entertaining a house party, one of the members of which is Capt. Jack Tims who is constantly beseeching the girl to marry him. One of the first scenes shows the arrival of the mail and the girls flocking in wearing their bathing suits to get their letters — for all of them have " adopted " a soldier in France to cheer up the American fighting men — all but Doris One of the girls receives a letter from her particular friend which mentions Harry Townsend, who is described as a fine chap, but without a friend outside of the army and Doris is persuaded to write to him. Townsend is delighted when he is seen receiving the letter and since she has asked for his picture and he hasn't one he borrows the picture of a chum. From that time on the romance grows rapidly, both maid and soldier now firmly in the grip of their great, unknown love. During this earlier part of the picture the director skilfully keeps the action leaping back and forth from France to America and not only do we have some glimpses of the battle scenes, but the sports and amusements of the fighters and a lot of sidelights that have not come into other pictures. In short these thrilling scenes have the psychological effect of showing how the love of the maid and the soldier grew during those strenuous days on the battlefield and the anxiety and waiting of the loy al women on this side of the water. BUT then comes a day when Townsend is wounded. He believes that he is going to die, writes Doris his farewell letter, but later he is taken to Tours and then one of the surgeons writes to the girl, at the same time enclosing Townsend's note. Immediately on receiving it she determines that she must go to France to be at his bedside. Her father refuses to let her go, and any way there is no way to make the trip until she appeals to Capt. Tims and in his great love for her he violates all naval regulations and smuggles her aboard the government transport, Tristan. Just as they are nearing the shores of France a submarine attacks the Tristan and Capt. Tims is killed and buried at sea and here we have a most moving situation. Then we have some scenes on the train where Doris hears the people paying tribute to the part that America has played in the war — a tribute that only increases her love for the man who now lies wounded in the hospital behind the lines. It is such incidents as this rather than any weight of the main story itself that serves to analyze the reason for such a love between two people who have never seen each other. Doris reaches the hospital to find Townsend with his face swathed in bandages and then when he recovers sufficiently she learns that he is not the original of the picture, but that his chum died in battle. But it was not the picture that Doris had come to love, but the man that had written those wonderful letters, who had been able to stir her by the spirit that he has shown in fighting for his country, for his cheeriness in trial and in peril. THEN we see them back in America, Townsend discharged from sen-ice because of his wounds and Doris now his wife. Then comes the news that Germanyhas signed the armistice and we have pictures of the wild celebration in New York street.s After this comes an epilogue, several years still in the future. The couple now have a boy of five or six and the boy is asking his father "What's up there in the stars?" He tells his little son "In every star there lives a soldier who has gone to glory " and we see the stars spelling out At left, Doris finds her "unknown love," to whom she is writing, at the right. Center shows a scene years after the war zchen their son learns the story of the "stars of glory"