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Photograph: Silent Era image collection.
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Sold at Auction
(1917) United States of America
B&W : Five reels
Directed by Sherwood MacDonald
Cast: Lois Meredith [Nan], William Conklin [Richard Stanley], Marguerite Nichols [Helen], Frank Mayo [Hal Norris], Charles Dudley [William Raynor], Lucy Blake [Raynor’s sister]
The Balboa Amusement Producing Company production; distributed by Pathé Exchange, Incorporated [Gold Rooster Plays]. / Produced by E.D. Horkheimer and H.M. Horkheimer. Scenario by Daniel F. Whitcomb. Cinematography by Joseph Brotherton. / Released 11 February 1917. / Standard 35mm spherical 1.33:1 format.
Drama.
Synopsis: [?] [From The Moving Picture World]? To remove forever anything that will remind him of his dream of happiness that was shattered by his wife’s infidelity, Stanley sends his infant daughter Nan to be cared for by a woman named Hopkins. He sends money regularly for her support but never visits her. Nan is treated as a slave and never receives any of the money intended for her. Her first real happiness comes in the sincere love of young reporter Hal. Fearing to lose her to him, Mrs. Hopkins tells her she has mulatto blood in her veins. Crushed by the lie, Nan flees from the only home she has ever known. Ignorant of the world, she is carried unknowingly by the tide of events into what is termed a matrimonial agency but is actually something far worse. Nan ends up placed at auction and her own father bids for her against other millionaires. As he outbids them all, Hal, who has traced her, enters, just in time to reveal to the father that Nan is his own daughter.
Reviews: [The Moving Picture World, 10 February 1917, page ?] The troubles of the heroine in “Sold at Auction,” a five-reel photoplay produced for Pathé by the Horkheimers, are sufficient to crush an ordinary woman completely. Her father discovers the infidelity of the child’s mother and gives the little girl over to the care of others. She is brought up as a servant, told at eighteen that she has mulatto blood in her veins, and falls into the hands of a female white slaver who puts her up at auction, her own father outbidding the rest of the men. He learns the truth in time, and the unfortunate girl sees a prospect of happiness with a young reporter that has fallen in love with her. There is very little that is uplifting in such a story. The auction episode has not been made unduly offensive, and the producers have treated the entire drama with restraint, but the subject is unpleasant in spite of its dramatic value. Lois Meredith is appealing as the badly treated Nan, and William Conklin carries out the author’s conception of her contemptible father. Frank Mayo, Marguerite Nichols, Charles Dudley and Lucy Blake round out a competent cast.
Survival status: The film is presumed lost.
Current rights holder: Public domain [USA].
Listing updated: 4 December 2023.
References: Website-ASFFDb; Website-IMDb.
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