Hope - A Red Cross Seal Story
About Hope - A Red Cross Seal Story
A small-town banker laughs off a letter from the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis. His answer says Palmer, New York, has no consumption and needs no sanatorium. His fiancée Edith, daughter of one of his clerks, thinks she has a cold. The local doctor tells her otherwise. She leaves Palmer for treatment at Bellevue in Manhattan. Alone in a bare room, under the title “The Struggle,” she sees the word HOPE from a Red Cross pamphlet appear on the curtain, then kneels. The reel ends on the same pamphlet and on Edith with her new husband.
Cast & crew
More about Hope - A Red Cross Seal Story
Charles J. Brabin directed James Oppenheim’s script. The National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis sponsored it. Edison released it to theaters on 16 November 1912, two days before that year’s three million Christmas Seals went on sale. Gertrude McCoy is Edith. George Lessey is John Harvey, the bank president and her fiancé. William West is her father, a bank clerk. Robert Brower is Dr. Morris. The Museum of Modern Art print runs 14 minutes copied at 19 frames a second. Martin Marks wrote a new score for the Treasures III edition.
Themes
Background
Christmas Seals began in the United States in 1907, a penny stamp for holiday envelopes. In the 1910s the tuberculosis association and the American National Red Cross split the proceeds. Hope opened two days before the 1912 stamps.
Making
Brabin’s reel is a Christmas Seal advertisement that refuses the banker’s line. The cure on screen is rest and a city hospital, not a drug. Antibiotics were decades off. The vision on the curtain is a still from the Red Cross pamphlet.
Look
The MoMA print’s dark shot of Edith alone in the New York room is the contrast with the sunlit HOPE image that appears on her curtain.
Music
Silent in 1912. Martin Marks wrote a score for the Treasures III restoration.
Preservation
The Museum of Modern Art preserves a 35mm print, copied at 19 frames a second for a 14-minute viewing version. It is in Treasures III: Social Issues in American Film, with a score by Martin Marks.
Notes
- It is the third of six Edison one-reelers, each November or December from 1910 through 1915, tied to the Christmas Seal campaign.
- The 1910 film in the series, Red Cross Seal, is lost. It was about a tenement girl who designs that year’s seal.
- Palmer is played as a town 50 miles north of Albany.
- Bellevue is where Edith goes because Palmer has no sanatorium.
- The National Film Preservation Foundation notes call the Edison-association shorts probably the first film series made for health education.
Scenes
- Harvey’s letter dismisses the sanatorium appeal.
- Edith is told the cold is tuberculosis.
- On the curtain, the pamphlet’s sunlit picture and the word HOPE appear.
- She kneels, and the reel closes on the pamphlet and her marriage.
Also available
- Internet Archive (silent-hope-a-red-cross-seal-story)
- Treasures III: Social Issues in American Film
- Museum of Modern Art
Quotes
This is a country town. We don't have consumption here and therefore do not need a sanatorium.
