A Strange Meeting
About A Strange Meeting
In a Bowery dance hall, Mary Rollins meets the Reverend John Stanton, who has come for a drunken boy and who hands out cards printed with Psalm 23. The verses send her to his mission. At home her father and brother force her to join a burglary, and the flat they pick is Stanton's. He catches Mary and her brother, then lets them go. She has his watch. She brings it back. He asks her to leave that life. The film ends with her in the chapel, arms out, taking the last line of the psalm.
Cast & crew
More about A Strange Meeting
D. W. Griffith directed for Biograph. He and Stanner E. V. Taylor wrote it. Billy Bitzer photographed it. Biograph copyrighted it in 1909 as J130279. Released August 2, 1909, at one reel, 967 feet.
Background
A Biograph release of August 2, 1909, set in the Bowery and a storefront mission.
Making
Griffith shot it as a one-reel Biograph drama, with Bitzer on the camera and the stock company filling the dance hall and the mission.
Look
Billy Bitzer photographed the dance hall, the mission, and Stanton's rooms.
Preservation
A paper print survives at the Library of Congress. A picture copy is also on Wikimedia Commons.
Notes
- Stephanie Longfellow plays Mary Rollins and Arthur V. Johnson plays the Reverend John Stanton.
- Henry B. Walthall plays Mary's father, Frank Powell her brother, Kate Bruce the concerned mother, and Billy Quirk the drunken son.
- Mary Pickford, Lottie Pickford, Mack Sennett, James Kirkwood, Owen Moore, Florence La Badie, and Wilfred Lucas are in the company.
- Moving Picture World printed a full synopsis that quotes Psalm 23 and the line "Thou shalt not steal.
- A 35mm paper positive is in the Library of Congress paper-print collection.
Scenes
- Stanton faces down the dance-hall crowd and gives Mary a card with Psalm 23.
- Mary brings his watch and chain back to the rooms she had just robbed.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (A Strange Meeting (1909).webm)
Quotes
Show me Thy ways, O Lord; teach me Thy paths.
I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
