Rescued by Rover
About Rescued by Rover
A nursemaid refuses money to a beggar woman, then talks to a soldier and does not see the woman take the baby from the pram. At home she tells the mother. The family collie, Rover, jumps out, follows the woman across a river to an attic lodging, and is driven off. He swims back and leads the father, who takes the child from the beggar. At home the baby is put in the mother's arms while Rover prances around them.
Cast & crew
More about Rescued by Rover
Lewin Fitzhamon directed. Margaret Hepworth wrote the story. Cecil Hepworth produced and photographed it at Walton-on-Thames. BFI Screenonline gives the cost as seven pounds, thirteen shillings and sixpence. More than 400 copies were ordered, sold at about £8 each. The negative wore out twice, and the company shot two further versions to match.
Themes
In film history
Hepworth followed the dog story with Dumb Sagacity (1907) and The Dog Outwits the Kidnappers (1908). James Williamson made The £100 Reward (1908) in the same line.
Making
May Clark was also the cutting-room assistant. The rest of the cast was the family and the dog. Hepworth later wondered why he had played the father in a frock coat and tall hat.
Reviews
Michael Brooke, on BFI Screenonline, writes that Fitzhamon cut on the dog's action so a shot of Rover running reads as a rescue, and that the pacing was new for 1905.
Look
Cecil Hepworth photographed it. Fitzhamon framed and sometimes panned to keep the dog's run moving from shot to shot. Arc lights were used in the attic.
Music
Silent.
Preservation
Prints are held by the BFI National Archive and the Library of Congress. A BFI copy runs 6 minutes 21 seconds.
Notes
- Blair, the Hepworth collie, plays Rover. After the release he became a household name.
- The baby is Barbara Hepworth, Cecil and Margaret's infant daughter, not the sculptor of the same name.
- Cecil Hepworth plays the father and Margaret Hepworth the mother. May Clark, who had played Alice in Hepworth's Alice in Wonderland, is the nursemaid.
- Sebastian Smith plays the soldier and his wife, Lindsay Gray, plays the beggar woman. Hepworth later wrote that the two professionals were paid half a guinea each.
- American Mutoscope and Biograph distributed it in the United States.
- Screenonline counts more than twenty shots, cut on the dog's movement from one frame into the next.
Scenes
- Rover trails the beggar woman across the river to the attic, then races home and brings the father back.
- The baby is handed to the mother while Rover circles the family.
Influenced
- Dumb Sagacity (1907)
- The Dog Outwits the Kidnappers (1908)
- The £100 Reward (1908)
Also available
- Internet Archive (silent-rescued-by-rover)
- BFI DVD Early Cinema: Primitives and Pioneers
