The Greater Call

1910

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About The Greater Call

Claudine, played by Alice Donovan, leaves the stage, marries, and has a child. After three years at home she is bored and goes back to the theater. A telegram says the child is dying. She walks out of a performance, still in costume, and reaches the bedside in time to see the child recover.

Cast & crew

More about The Greater Call

Essanay released the short on 20 December 1910 on a split reel with the comedy Hank and Lank: Blind Men. The National Film Preservation Foundation notes a split-screen that sets the backstage rush beside Claudine at her mirror.

Themes

Making

The story is the nickelodeon weepie in one reel: career, a child, and a telegram that pulls the mother off the stage in the middle of the act.

Reviews

The Moving Picture World, 31 December 1910, found it unlikely that she would ignore her child for years and then leave mid-play, then granted that the jolt works if it was meant to heighten the drama.

Technique

One shot is split: the company mills backstage while Donovan, calm, puts on her makeup.

Preservation

UCLA Film & Television Archive preserved a 35mm print from a New Zealand Film Archive source. The National Film Preservation Foundation streams that copy, and the Internet Archive holds the-greater-call-1910.

Notes

  • The Moving Picture World review of 31 December 1910 calls Donovan the whole picture and says the other actors only assist.
  • Essanay's Indian-head trademark is planted in the sets; one later viewer counted it in three of the five scenes.
  • Donovan had been in touring plays from 1907. A 1911 group portrait places her in Essanay's Chicago company. She is credited in two further films, in 1911 and 1912.
  • UCLA preserved a 35mm print from material supplied by the New Zealand Film Archive, copied at 18 frames per second for the NFPF.
  • An Internet Archive copy is filed as the-greater-call-1910.

Scenes

  • A split screen holds the backstage crowd next to Claudine putting on her makeup.
  • She abandons the play when the telegram arrives and gets to the child before the danger passes.

Also available

  • Internet Archive (the-greater-call-1910)