The Two Roses
“A powerful, pathetic, pretty story of life in Little Italy.”
About The Two Roses
Young Tony Prolo carries lunch to his father at a railroad job and is knocked down by Mr. Sears's car. The father carries him home. Sears then gets a Black Hand letter demanding $10,000, to be handed to a man with a white rose on a named corner. Police set a trap. Tony senior, on his way from the doctor, buys a white rose for his son and is arrested at that corner. The real writer, also carrying a white rose, is caught behind a door. At the Prolo house the constable brings him in, Tony is released, and Sears buys the family a cottage in the country surrounded by white roses.
Cast & crew
More about The Two Roses
Thanhouser's 16th release, 7 June 1910. The director is uncredited. Thanhouser historians name Barry O'Neil or Lloyd B. Carleton as the two possible directors. A surviving print runs about 12 minutes. The original intertitles are lost.
Themes
Making
The surviving print had no intertitles. The restoration titles were written later from the 1910 synopsis, not from original cards.
Music
Günter A. Buchwald composed and performed the music used on the restored print.
Preservation
A mostly complete 35mm print is at the Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin. Original intertitles are gone; German titles were added from the Moving Picture World synopsis, with an English translation by Ned Thanhouser. An Internet Archive copy is filed as silent-the-two-roses.
Notes
- Marie Eline plays the boy Tony. Moving Picture World used the phrase The Thanhouser Kid for her in connection with this film, the start of that billing.
- Frank H. Crane plays Tony Prolo the father. Anna Rosemond plays his wife.
- The blackmailer and the father are both carrying a white rose, which is why the police take the wrong man.
- The Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin holds a mostly complete 35mm print whose only original card was the French title Les Deux Roses.
- Urte Alfs and Anke Mebold of the Deutsches Filminstitut wrote new German titles from the Moving Picture World synopsis. Ned Thanhouser supplied an English translation of those titles.
- Günter A. Buchwald composed and played a score for the restoration.
- It is on the two-disc set Screening the Poor in the Edition Filmmuseum series.
Scenes
- Tony is knocked down by Sears's car while throwing rocks near the railroad work.
- Police arrest his father because he is the man on the corner with a white rose.
- Sears buys the family a country cottage ringed with white roses.
Also available
- Internet Archive (silent-the-two-roses)