''The Battle of the Sexes'' is a 1914 American silent

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super- ...

directed by

D. W. Griffith David Wark Griffith (January 22, 1875 – July 23, 1948) was an American film director. Considered one of the most influential figures in the history of the motion picture, he pioneered many aspects of film editing and expanded the art of the n ...

for the Majestic Motion Picture Company. No complete print of the film is known to exist; however, a fragment has survived. Griffith

remade Bas-Lag is the fictional world in which several of English author China Miéville's novels are set. Bas-Lag is a world where both magic (referred to as "thaumaturgy") and steampunk technology exist, and is home to many intelligent races. It is in ...

the film as '' The Battle of the Sexes'' in 1928 as a

comedy-drama Comedy drama, also known by the portmanteau ''dramedy'', is a genre of dramatic works that combines elements of comedy and drama. The modern, scripted-television examples tend to have more humorous bits than simple comic relief seen in a typical ...

and this latter version is available on DVD.

Plot

Frank Andrews (Donald Crisp) is a well-to-do, middle-class apartment dweller who is devoted to his wife (Mary Alden) and two children, John (Robert Harron) and Jane (Lillian Gish). Andrews enters into a mid-life crisis when a fetching young lady, Cleo (Fay Tincher), moves into the apartment next door to the Andrewses. Cleo takes note of Andrews' interest in her and begins to flirt with him, going so far as to set a fire in her apartment in order to attract his aid. Before long, Andrews and Cleo are involved in an affair, and Andrews begins to neglect both his family and responsibilities at work. Humiliated and aghast at her mother's silent suffering over the situation, Jane goes next door with the idea of killing Cleo, but instead they strike up a conversation, and a mutual understanding. They hatch a plan whereby one of Cleo's former beaus (Owen Moore) appears to be courting Jane in front of Andrews, who swiftly condemns his daughter's interest in the man. Jane counters by pointing out Andrews' own poor moral choices, and he sees the error of his ways. Andrews is happily reconciled to his family, and Cleo sets out in search of new digs.

Cast

Donald Crisp Donald William Crisp (27 July 188225 May 1974) was an English film actor as well as an early producer, director and screenwriter. His career lasted from the early silent film era into the 1960s. He won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor ...

as Frank Andrews *

Lillian Gish Lillian Diana Gish (October 14, 1893February 27, 1993) was an American actress, director, and screenwriter. Her film-acting career spanned 75 years, from 1912, in silent film shorts, to 1987. Gish was called the "First Lady of American Cinema", ...

as Jane Andrews, the daughter *

Robert Harron Robert Emmett Harron (April 12, 1893 – September 5, 1920) was an American motion picture actor of the early silent film era. Although he acted in over 200 films, he is possibly best recalled for his roles in the D.W. Griffith directed film ...

as John Andrews, the son *

Mary Alden Mary Maguire Alden (June 18, 1883 – July 2, 1946) was an American motion picture and stage actress. She was one of the first Broadway actresses to work in Hollywood. Life Alden was born in New York City on June 18, 1883. She performed on Bro ...

as Mrs. Frank Andrews *

Owen Moore Owen Moore (12 December 1886 – 9 June 1939) was an Irish-born American actor, appearing in more than 279 movies spanning from 1908 to 1937. Early life and career Moore was born in Fordstown Crossroads, County Meath, Ireland. Along with his ...

as Cleo's lover *

Fay Tincher Fay Tincher (April 17, 1884 – October 11, 1983) was an American comic actress in motion pictures of the silent film era. Early years Tincher was born in Topeka, Kansas, and was the daughter of George Tincher and Elizabeth Tincher. She had th ...

as Cleo *

W. E. Lawrence William Effingham Lawrence (August 22, 1896 – November 28, 1947) was an American actor of the silent era. He was born in Brooklyn, New York and died in Los Angeles, California. Known by the nickname "Babe", Lawrence appeared in 120 films ...

History and background

''The Battle of the Sexes'' was the second D. W. Griffith feature to be released to the public, following Biograph's long-delayed release of Griffith's first feature, ''

Judith of Bethulia ''Judith of Bethulia'' (1914) is an American film starring Blanche Sweet and Henry B. Walthall, and produced and directed by D. W. Griffith, based on the play "Judith and the Holofernes" (1896) by Thomas Bailey Aldrich, which itself was an adapt ...

'', by barely more than a month. He had already begun '' The Escape'' (1914), but production had been stopped when actress

Blanche Sweet Sarah Blanche Sweet (June 18, 1896 – September 6, 1986) was an American silent film actress who began her career in the earliest days of the Hollywood motion picture film industry. Early life Born Sarah Blanche Sweet (though her first nam ...

fell sick with

scarlet fever Scarlet fever, also known as Scarlatina, is an infectious disease caused by '' Streptococcus pyogenes'' a Group A streptococcus (GAS). The infection is a type of Group A streptococcal infection (Group A strep). It most commonly affects chi ...

, and the Reliance-Majestic Studio was already in trouble and in need of a viable Griffith property, fast. Griffith decided on a scenario entitled "The Single Standard", written by in-house screenwriter Daniel Carson Goodman and filmed at the Reliance studio in New York City, rather than at the Hollywood studio, which was still being built. According to Lillian Gish, ''The Battle of the Sexes'' was shot in only five days. Although the film was complete by February, its release was delayed for two further months. Several reasons have been advanced for the impasse, but scholar Paul Spehr has suggested that both Reliance-Majestic and its distributor, Mutual, were having difficulty developing an effective distribution strategy for longer, multi-reel films in a market still dominated by one- and two-reel subjects. ''The Battle of the Sexes'' was premiered at Weber's Theater in New York City on April 12, 1914, and was a considerable success, the first Griffith enjoyed with his name over the title. Although the film is routinely listed as "lost",

Iris Barry Iris Barry (1895 – 22 December 1969) was a film critic and curator. In the 1920s she helped establish the original London Film Society, and was the first curator of the film department of the Museum of Modern Art, New York City in 1935. Life Ba ...

mentioned the existence of a short fragment of it in her 1940 monograph on Griffith. Barry, Iris, ''D. W. Griffith: American Film Master''. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, 1940 The surviving scene takes place in a restaurant, where Mrs. Andrews and the children take a booth, and the children note that Mr. Andrews and Cleo are seated at the booth next to them; Mrs. Andrews has not noticed this, and the children find an excuse to get her out of there just before the scene ends. Were there a minute or two more of this fragment extant, it might be possible to see

Rudolph Valentino Rodolfo Pietro Filiberto Raffaello Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguolla (May 6, 1895 – August 23, 1926), known professionally as Rudolph Valentino and nicknamed The Latin Lover, was an Italian actor based in the United States who starred ...

's alleged screen debut in the bit part of a

taxi dancer A taxi dancer is a paid dance partner in a partner dance. Taxi dancers are hired to dance with their customers on a dance-by-dance basis. When taxi dancing first appeared in taxi-dance halls during the early 20th century in the United States, mal ...

; he is known to have played as an extra in an early Griffith feature, and a shadowy figure tentatively identified in one of the stills for ''The Battle of the Sexes'' may be him. While the familiar, and now popular, 1928 remake of ''The Battle of the Sexes'' plays largely as a comedy, the 1914 original was a melodrama.

References

External links

*
AFI entry
{{DEFAULTSORT:Battle Of The Sexes 1914 films 1914 drama films 1914 lost films Silent American drama films American silent feature films American black-and-white films 1910s English-language films Films based on short fiction Films directed by D. W. Griffith Lost American films Lost drama films 1910s American films

Plot

Cast

History and background

See also

References

External links