The Cheat

1915 Drama 59 minutes Directed by Cecil B. DeMille

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About The Cheat

Edith Hardy (Fannie Ward) keeps spending while her husband Richard (Jack Dean) has his money in a stock bet. As treasurer of a Red Cross drive for Belgian refugees, she takes $10,000 from the fund and loses it on a tip. Hishuru Tori (Sessue Hayakawa), a Japanese ivory merchant, covers the sum in exchange for a sexual bargain. When Richard's stock pays off, she tries to buy the bargain back. Tori refuses and brands her shoulder. In the struggle she shoots him. Richard arrives, finds his own check, and tells the police he fired the shot. At the trial Edith bares the brand and says it is her defense. The judge sets the verdict aside and the charge is dropped.

Cast & crew

More about The Cheat

Cecil B. DeMille directed, uncredited on the original release, and produced with Jesse L. Lasky. Hector Turnbull and Jeanie MacPherson wrote it. Alvin Wyckoff photographed it. Paramount released it on 13 December 1915. A re-release on 24 November 1918 renamed Tori as Haka Arakau and called him a Burmese ivory king, Japan then being an American ally. Japanese Americans had protested the 1915 portrayal. The film was banned in Britain and was not released in Japan. The usually seen print is the 1918 re-release.

Themes

Background

A Lasky-Paramount drama of December 1915, later altered so the villain was Burmese rather than Japanese, and kept out of Britain and Japan.

Music

Robert Israel composed a score in 1994 for later presentations of the film.

Preservation

Selected for the National Film Registry in 1993. Prints are at the George Eastman House (the 1918 re-release), the Library of Congress, UCLA, the British Film Institute, and other archives. Copies are on the Internet Archive and Wikimedia Commons.

Notes

  • Jack Dean was Fannie Ward's husband off screen.
  • Robert Israel wrote a new score in 1994. He is not a 1915 composer on this film.
  • Paramount remade it in 1923 with Pola Negri and in 1931 with Tallulah Bankhead. Marcel L'Herbier's Forfaiture (1937) cast Hayakawa again.
  • Camille Erlanger's opera La Forfaiture, from the scenario, opened at the Opéra-Comique in 1921 and played three times.

Scenes

  • Tori brands Edith's shoulder when she will not keep the bargain.
  • In court she shows the brand and the judge throws out the verdict.

Influenced

  • The Cheat (1923)
  • The Cheat (1931)
  • Forfaiture (1937)

Also available

  • Internet Archive (TheCheat)
  • Wikimedia Commons (The Cheat (1915) by Cecil B. DeMille.webm)

Quotes

And this is my defense.

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