The Song of the Shirt
About The Song of the Shirt
D. W. Griffith’s Biograph short follows Thomas Hood’s 1843 poem. Florence Lawrence plays the working woman, the first sister. Linda Arvidson plays the dying woman, the second sister. Mack Sennett is the foreman, and he also appears in an office and a second restaurant. Harry Solter is the employer. Robert Harron is the stock boy. G. W. Bitzer photographed it.
Cast & crew
More about The Song of the Shirt
Frank E. Woods and Griffith are the scenario credits. Biograph copyrighted it on 14 November 1908, H118293, and released it on 17 November. The release length is one reel, 638 feet, listed as 10 minutes. A Commons file runs 7 minutes and 28 seconds. The Biograph AB logo is in several scenes. A paper print is in the Library of Congress.
Themes
Background
The poem is about a woman sewing shirts at home for pay that does not feed her. The film uses that situation for two sisters, one of them dying.
Making
Griffith and Woods put Hood’s seamstress poem into a one-reel Biograph, with Bitzer shooting the workroom, the office, and the restaurants.
Look
G. W. Bitzer shot the workroom and the restaurants. The Biograph logo is visible in several setups.
Preservation
A paper print is in the Library of Congress. A shorter copy is on Wikimedia Commons.
Notes
- Hood wrote the poem for a widow, a seamstress named Mrs. Biddell, and Punch printed it at Christmas 1843.
- Arvidson is the dying sister. Lawrence is the one still working.
- George Gebhardt and Arthur V. Johnson play waiters.
- Silent Era lists the surviving material as a 35mm paper positive.
Scenes
- Lawrence is the sister still at the work.
- Arvidson is the sister who is dying.
Influenced by
- Thomas Hood’s poem The Song of the Shirt (1843)
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (The Song of the Shirt (1908).webm)
