The Scarlet Car
About The Scarlet Car
Paul Revere Forbes, a bank teller and a descendant of the rider, finds that Cyrus Peabody and his son Ernest have lost $35,000 of the bank's money. When Forbes threatens to expose them, Peabody knocks him out and Henry Davidson drives the body off in a scarlet car. Forbes lives, his mind broken, hiding in a cabin and believing he is the original Paul Revere, with a ledger page he will hand only to General Washington. Billy Winthrop elopes with Forbes's daughter Beatrice in a rainstorm. A mob comes for Billy after Ernest says she was abducted. Beatrice has a passerby tell her father that the general wants the paper. Forbes gives it up, the town tars the Peabodys instead, his mind clears, and Billy and Beatrice marry.
Cast & crew
More about The Scarlet Car
Joe De Grasse directed William Parker's script from Richard Harding Davis's 1907 novel. King D. Gray photographed it. Bluebird Photoplays made it for Universal, which released it on December 24, 1917. The same novel was filmed again by Universal in 1923.
Themes
Making
Joe De Grasse directed, and his brother Sam De Grasse plays Ernest Peabody opposite Chaney's teller. Chaney supplied his own makeup for the cabin scenes, in which Forbes believes he is the Revolutionary rider.
Look
King D. Gray photographed it, including the wrecked scarlet car in the country and Chaney's cabin scenes as the man who thinks he is Paul Revere.
Music
Silent, with English intertitles.
Preservation
A print is at the Library of Congress.
Notes
- Lon Chaney plays Forbes and did his own makeup for the role. A still shows him in that makeup.
- Franklyn Farnum is Billy Winthrop, Edith Johnson is Beatrice, Sam De Grasse is Ernest Peabody, Howard Crampton is Cyrus, and Al W. Filson is Samuel Winthrop.
- The Chicago Board of Censors ordered a cut of a man being slugged, a shorter lobby fight, and only a flash of the mob at the start of a reel.
- Clips appear in the 1995 documentary Lon Chaney: Behind the Mask.
Scenes
- The scarlet car is found wrecked, with Henry Davidson dead in it and Forbes missing.
- In the cabin Forbes refuses the ledger page to anyone but General Washington.
- Beatrice prompts a stranger to say the general wants the document, and Forbes hands it over as the mob closes in.
Influenced by
- Richard Harding Davis's novel The Scarlet Car (1907)
Also available
- Internet Archive (silent-the-scarlet-car)
