Reel Life (1916-1917)

Helen Holmes' in A LAW OF TH AN intensely exciting episode in Chapter XII of “A Lass of the Lumberlands,” and one which for daring conception has seldom been excelled on the screen, is the race between two mogul loco¬ motives, one driven by Helen Holmes, heroine of the thrilling lumber camp story, and the other by professional engineers who know the art of leaving a “loco” going fifty miles an hour with¬ out breaking their necks, and do it just in time to escape going in the ditch when their big machine telescopes a string of freight cars and then rolls over on its side. As is eminently fitting, chapter twelve of the SignalMutual photo-novel entitled “The Mainline Wreck,” takes its title from the railroad episode, but there is so much that is startling about this chapter of the big feature play that it would have been possible to pick several strong titles based on happenings almost as extraordinary as the locomotive race. For instance, when Young Stephen Holmes, Helen’s' foster brother, undertakes to reach the goldmining camp by canoe, using the rapid current of the Onawa river to beat the train, and one of Millionaire Holmes’ emis¬ saries shoots away his paddle so that he is left to the mercy of the rapids, with falls a hundred feet high only half a mile away, there is another situation compelling breathless interest. Young Holmes is seen sitting helpless in the frail craft, which spins like a top in the swirling current. Along comes the express, with Helen sitting by the window in a Pullman car. She is a witness to the firing of the shot which smashes Stephen’s paddle, identifies Blake, the renegade saloonkeeper, as having fired it, and as the train stops she rushes to the tall bridge under which she knows the canoe must pass within a few seconds, drops a 100foot rope and drags Stephen to safety. The big scene in the gold diggings on Shady Creek, with gold washing apparatus in operation and all the paraphernalia of the gold camp on view, while young Holmes disposes of his claim for $30,000 and turns the money over to Helen in order that she may use it to pay the graders whose money has been held up because “Dollar” Holmes has started a run of the Woodman’s bank, is a show in itself. For the first time in his evil career, “Dollar” Holmes, whose scheming mind keeps his opponents in constant hot water, is given a taste of his own medicine in this chapter. Thomas Lingham, who portrays Holmes, has a rather disagreeable experience. After Holmes has launched the run on the Woodsman’s bank and made him¬ self generally disagreeable after his usual fashion, the depositors, a rough lot of lumberjacks, discover that Holmes has drawn all his money out of the bank and left them stranded without a cent. With one accord they decide to take their grievance out on Holmes, who is seized, rushed to the steep bank of the Onawa and tossed incontinently into the rushing stream. When Holmes is dragged from the water, more dead than alive, his maledictions appear singularly sin¬ cere, and Mr. Lingham admits that he probably put as much force into that particular bit of objurgation as he ever did into any part. Will M. Chapman, personifying Jim Blake, the boot¬ legger, handles a Winchester very much as though he had been a woodsman all his life, in the scene where he is trying to pick off the occupants of Helen Holmes’ en¬ gine cab, while himself shooting from the running board of a pursuing locomotive. Just how much railway rolling stock has been splint¬ ered into matchwood in the filming of this remarkable play it is impossible to recall, but certainly not less than $40,000 worth of cars and railway material have been chewed up in the process. Taking it as a whole Chapter XII is a highly sensa¬ tional series of episodes without a dull moment anywhere in the action. As usual Helen Holmes is up and at it from the gong to the bell, boarding trains, running off engines, quelling bank riots, rescuing drowning men, run¬ ning down murderers, and making herself generally useful. That episode in which Miss Holmes hauls William Brunton, who is Stephen Holmes in the play, a hundred feet from the river to the bridge platform by a long rope, is certainly an extraordinary one, because Mr. Brunton doesn’t weigh less than 140 and the sheer physical strength involved is enough to make folk wonder where the little actress carries her dynamo. REEL LIFE— Page Six