A Mormon Maid
About A Mormon Maid
In the 1840s a Mormon wagon train bound for Utah saves Dora and her family from an attack and they join it. Tom Rigdon, a new convert, and Elder Darius Burr, who already has several wives, both pursue her. Burr wants her as a sixth wife. Her mother kills herself over the polygamy. Dora has to decide. Mae Murray plays Dora. Frank Borzage plays Tom. Noah Beery plays Burr. Robert Z. Leonard directed.
Cast & crew
More about A Mormon Maid
Charles Sarver and Paul West wrote the screenplay. Jesse L. Lasky produced. Charles Rosher photographed it. Paramount released it on 22 April 1917. Wikipedia times it at 68 minutes. Hobart Bosworth plays John Hogue. Edythe Chapman plays Nancy Hogue. Richard Henry Cummings is also billed. The company is Lasky’s, not Universal. The film survives complete.
Themes
Background
The trek to Utah and the practice of plural marriage are the setting the script uses, not a later Utah.
Making
Lasky and Leonard set Murray’s melodrama on the 1840s trek and made the polygamy proposal the turn of the story. Rosher shot it.
Look
Charles Rosher photographed the wagon train and the household Burr wants Dora to enter.
Preservation
Wikipedia says the film survives complete. A copy is on Wikimedia Commons.
Notes
- Murray’s Dora is one of the few of her silent features that still exists complete.
- Beery’s Burr is the elder with the wives. Borzage’s Tom is the convert.
- The catalog outline includes the mother’s suicide. The Wikipedia plot summary stops at the sixth-wife proposal.
- A Commons file is titled A Mormon Maid (1917).
Scenes
- The train saves Dora’s family from the attack, and they join it.
- Burr asks for her as a sixth wife.
- Her mother kills herself, and Dora has to choose.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (A Mormon Maid (1917).webm)
