Eyes of Youth

Name: Eyes of Youth
Director: Albert Parker
Genre: Drama
Released: 1919
Duration: 1 h 18 min
Cast: Clara Kimball Young, Gareth Hughes, Pauline Starke, Edmund Lowe, Rudolph Valentino

1919 Drama 78 minutes Directed by Albert Parker

About Eyes of Youth

Gina Ashling, played by Clara Kimball Young, is shown three futures by a yogi and a crystal. On the path of duty she becomes a worn-out schoolteacher and helps no one. On the path of ambition she is a Paris opera star who has paid for fame with her honor. On the path of riches she marries a millionaire who wrecks her name to get a divorce, and she ends addicted to drugs. She does not ask to see the fourth road, and she takes that one.

Cast & crew

More about Eyes of Youth

Albert Parker directed. Arthur Edeson photographed it. Garson Productions made it, and Equity Pictures released it in New York on October 26, 1919, and nationally on November 30. It comes from the Broadway play Eyes of Youth, which starred Marjorie Rambeau in 1917-18.

Themes

Three previewed futures
Duty, ambition, and money
The road she refuses to look at
A small role that launched Valentino
crystal ball
yogi
Gina Ashling
schoolteacher
opera
drug addict
Rudolph Valentino

Background

The picture followed a Broadway success of 1917-18 and caught Valentino a year before The Four Horsemen.

Making

Young plays Gina in three different futures, including the addict scenes, in one feature built around a crystal-ball device from the play.

Reviews

The New York Times noted that Gina "finally takes, with happy confidence, the one she doesn't investigate," because she knows it cannot be as bad as the three she has seen.

Look

Arthur Edeson photographed the three futures and the crystal-ball scenes.

Music

Silent, with English intertitles.

Preservation

A print is on the Internet Archive.

Notes

Rudolph Valentino, billed as Rudolfo Valentino, plays Clarence Morgan, a thief and con artist.
Vincent Serrano plays the yogi. Milton Sills plays Louis Anthony. Edmund Lowe plays Peter Judson. Ralph Lewis plays Robert Goring.
Gareth Hughes plays Kenneth Ashling. Pauline Starke plays Rita Ashling. Norman Selby, the boxer Kid McCoy, plays Dick Brownell.
The film is often credited with getting Valentino the role in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921).

Scenes

The yogi shows Gina the three bad futures in the crystal.
Valentino appears as the con artist Clarence Morgan.

Influenced by

Eyes of Youth, the Broadway play (1917-18)

Also available

Internet Archive (EyesOfYouth)