A Child of the Ghetto
“An Innocent Victim of Fate's Cunning.”
About A Child of the Ghetto
After her mother dies, Ruth (Dorothy West) is alone on the Lower East Side. The landlady wants the rent, so Ruth gets work sewing. The shop owner's son steals money and plants it in the bundle of shirts she has mended. She runs. A policeman breaks into her room. She escapes by streetcar into the country, faints, and is taken in by a farmer and his wife. She and a young man there grow close. The same policeman, out fishing, recognizes her at the well and lets her be.
Cast & crew
More about A Child of the Ghetto
D. W. Griffith directed. The AFI Catalog credits the scenario to Stanner E. V. Taylor. The English Wikipedia credits the writing to Griffith. Billy Bitzer and Arthur Marvin photographed it. Interiors were shot at the Biograph studio at 11 East 14th Street. Released on 6 June 1910. AFI gives 989 feet and 13 minutes. The English Wikipedia gives 16 minutes.
Themes
Background
A Biograph short of June 1910, set on the Lower East Side and then on a farm outside the city.
Making
Interiors were filmed at Biograph's studio at 11 East 14th Street.
Reviews
The National Center for Jewish Film calls it one of the earliest films to treat an interfaith romance unproblematically.
Look
Billy Bitzer and Arthur Marvin photographed it, with the indoor scenes at the Biograph studio on East 14th Street.
Technique
Griffith cut the story in 46 shots, up from the 13 shots of Romance of a Jewess.
Preservation
The film survives. A copy is on Wikimedia Commons.
Notes
- Henry B. Walthall plays the farmer. George Nichols plays Officer Quinn. Charles West plays the proprietor's son. Kate Bruce plays Ruth's mother.
- Richard Brody, in the New Yorker piece "Babel on the Hudson," identifies Ruth as Jewish and the young man as a Gentile.
- The film uses 46 shots. Romance of a Jewess, two years earlier, used 13.
Scenes
- The son hides the money in Ruth's bundle of shirts.
- The policeman, fishing in the country, sees her at the well and lets the matter go.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (A Child of the Ghetto (1910).webm)
