I have never seen WHERE ARE MY CHILDREN? Not even when Turner Classics showed some time back on television. But in reading the synopsis of the film, and the various comments made, my failure to see it strikes me as my loss. It stars Tyrone Power Sr. at the height of his acting fame. It is directed and written in part by Lois Weber, who is usually considered the first major female film director. It deals quite honestly with the emotional problems connected to abortion with the parents opposed to it. In short it is rather unique for a 1916 production - and it actually has ended up one of the first films protected by the Library of Congress. Not a bad resume for a film.
But although I can't comment on the film's content or directing or the acting (nor even give it a rating), I can add a curious footnote to the movie. Except for the film MANHATTAN MELODRAMA, WHERE ARE MY CHILDREN? is the only film I know of that played a role in an act of violence. MANHATTAN MELODRAMA, of course, is notorious as the Myrna Loy film that was seen by John Dillinger (in the company of the notorious informer, the "lady in red") when he was hiding in Chicago. As he left the Biograph theater there, he was shot down in the alley by FBI agents.
Not quite as notorious to us is WHERE ARE MY CHILDREN? It was used in a somewhat equally sinister way, as part of a murder alibi. On September 28, 1916, a Mr. Frederick Small murdered his wife at a cabin home they lived at near Lake Ossipee in New Hampshire. Small was doing it for insurance, but he planned to make it a perfect crime, by strangling his wife, and setting up a piece of machinery he constructed in the cabin to set a fire at a given time when he was gone, to burn down the cabin and destroy the body (so as to hide the proof of the strangulation). Small thought of almost everything. Edmund Lester Pearson, the first major American Criminal historian, discussed the case in his book FIVE MURDERS (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Doran Co., "THE CRIME CLUB", 1928) in his first chapter: "The Man who was Too Clever." He feels that he had never come across a homicide with so much time taken up in planning the actual crime as this one.
Small's alibi was that he would be taking a trip to Boston with a neighbor for business purposes. As he left the cabin, the driver of the car taking him to the railway station heard Small call out "Good bye!" Small later tried to expand this into having kissed his wife on the porch, but the driver did not recall that happening. When Small and his neighbor reached Boston, Small did things like sending a post card home from the hotel. He and his neighbor went to the local movie house (just about the time the fire should have been starting) and saw (as you can guess) WHERE ARE MY CHILDREN?
Pearson in describing the evening's events on the trip (the most "sinful" being some drinks of rye whiskey that Small brought along) as a ghastly attempt at a so-called trip full of dissipation. So it seems, but I am fascinated at the choice of the film (which Pearson mentions dealt with abortion). Why did Small choose that one? I suspect it was the star power of Mr Tyrone Power Sr. I can't believe that Small was interested in the issue of abortion (he had no children anyway). In any event, Small and his neighbor returned to the hotel to "learn" the bad news about a fire. Small acted horrified, and immediately he and his neighbor packed and returned back to Lake Ossipee. Actually Small was in for a shock. While the cabin was gutted by the fire, the fire was so intense as to cause the chair that the corpse of Mrs. Small was sitting in to fall through the wooden floor into a section of the cabin's basement that was full of water from the lake. Mrs. Small's body was preserved, complete with the rope laced around her neck.
Small was tried and convicted of first degree murder, and hanged (after an appeal failed) in 1918. I doubt that Tyrone Power or Lois Weber were ever aware of the involvement of the movie they made together in such a curiously interesting little murder case.
But although I can't comment on the film's content or directing or the acting (nor even give it a rating), I can add a curious footnote to the movie. Except for the film MANHATTAN MELODRAMA, WHERE ARE MY CHILDREN? is the only film I know of that played a role in an act of violence. MANHATTAN MELODRAMA, of course, is notorious as the Myrna Loy film that was seen by John Dillinger (in the company of the notorious informer, the "lady in red") when he was hiding in Chicago. As he left the Biograph theater there, he was shot down in the alley by FBI agents.
Not quite as notorious to us is WHERE ARE MY CHILDREN? It was used in a somewhat equally sinister way, as part of a murder alibi. On September 28, 1916, a Mr. Frederick Small murdered his wife at a cabin home they lived at near Lake Ossipee in New Hampshire. Small was doing it for insurance, but he planned to make it a perfect crime, by strangling his wife, and setting up a piece of machinery he constructed in the cabin to set a fire at a given time when he was gone, to burn down the cabin and destroy the body (so as to hide the proof of the strangulation). Small thought of almost everything. Edmund Lester Pearson, the first major American Criminal historian, discussed the case in his book FIVE MURDERS (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Doran Co., "THE CRIME CLUB", 1928) in his first chapter: "The Man who was Too Clever." He feels that he had never come across a homicide with so much time taken up in planning the actual crime as this one.
Small's alibi was that he would be taking a trip to Boston with a neighbor for business purposes. As he left the cabin, the driver of the car taking him to the railway station heard Small call out "Good bye!" Small later tried to expand this into having kissed his wife on the porch, but the driver did not recall that happening. When Small and his neighbor reached Boston, Small did things like sending a post card home from the hotel. He and his neighbor went to the local movie house (just about the time the fire should have been starting) and saw (as you can guess) WHERE ARE MY CHILDREN?
Pearson in describing the evening's events on the trip (the most "sinful" being some drinks of rye whiskey that Small brought along) as a ghastly attempt at a so-called trip full of dissipation. So it seems, but I am fascinated at the choice of the film (which Pearson mentions dealt with abortion). Why did Small choose that one? I suspect it was the star power of Mr Tyrone Power Sr. I can't believe that Small was interested in the issue of abortion (he had no children anyway). In any event, Small and his neighbor returned to the hotel to "learn" the bad news about a fire. Small acted horrified, and immediately he and his neighbor packed and returned back to Lake Ossipee. Actually Small was in for a shock. While the cabin was gutted by the fire, the fire was so intense as to cause the chair that the corpse of Mrs. Small was sitting in to fall through the wooden floor into a section of the cabin's basement that was full of water from the lake. Mrs. Small's body was preserved, complete with the rope laced around her neck.
Small was tried and convicted of first degree murder, and hanged (after an appeal failed) in 1918. I doubt that Tyrone Power or Lois Weber were ever aware of the involvement of the movie they made together in such a curiously interesting little murder case.