An Unsullied Shield
About An Unsullied Shield
A dying Duke of Rutland lectures his son for drinking, gambling, and the company he keeps. The son borrows from a moneylender, then forges his mother's name on a check to pay the debt. He walks the portrait gallery with the check in his wallet and falls asleep. The portraits wake. A warrior, an admiral, and a statesman step out and talk to him the way his father did.
Cast & crew
More about An Unsullied Shield
Charles J. Brabin wrote the scenario and directed. A Moving Picture World note of 18 January 1913 names the cast. A surviving timing is 17 minutes.
Themes
Making
Brabin stages the lecture twice: once from the sickbed, then from the frames on the gallery wall after the son has forged the check.
Notes
- Marc McDermott plays the sleeping descendant. Wadsworth Harris plays the Duke of Rutland, his dying father. Margery Bonney Erskine, billed as Mrs. Wallace Erskine, plays the Duchess.
- Harry Eytinge plays the moneylender.
- Walter Edwin plays the warrior ancestor. Herbert Prior plays the sea-fighting ancestor. Augustus Phillips plays the statesman.
- Mabel Trunnelle and Bessie Learn are also billed.
- Moving Picture World for 18 January 1913 is the trade note that assigns those ancestor parts.
Scenes
- The son forges his mother's signature to pay the moneylender.
- He falls asleep under the family portraits, and the ancestors come out of the frames.
Also available
- Internet Archive (silent-an-unsullied-shield)
