Shirley Mason lives on an island with her father, Joseph Burke, who has wasted his years searching for the pirate's treasure supposedly buried there. One day, George J. Forth shows up on his yacht, wins Miss Mason's heart and promise to wait, and then heads back to New York and his father's financial firm. A year later, Burke shoots himself by accident. Ruth fetches the Reverend William T. Hayes and Doctor William Strong, but they are too late to save the old man, and he is buried. Strong offers to marry her, but Miss Mason turns him down, remembering her promise, then tells them she has found the treasure in a cave, and offers to share it. When Strong gets the chests open, he discovered nothing but old gunpowder, but tells her there is a fortune therein, which will have to be disposed of quietly. He gives her money out of his own pocket, claiming it's an advance on their wealth, to go to New York so she can study singing.
It's the latest of the Kickstarter-funded restorations done by Ed Lorusso, with a lively score by Donald Drazin. It's not a terribly involved story, but Miss Mason, the youngest of the three Flugrath sisters (Edna Flugrath and Viola Dana were the elder two) offers a charming and lively performance in the lead role under the direction of Edward H. Griffith, one of twelves movies he directed in his first year behind the megaphone. Handsome photography of both the island and of Manhattan by Fred Brace show off the settings and the performers in a solid movie for 1917, which still charms in a well preserved copy from the Library of Congress. With Sally Crute and Jessie Stevens, it shows solid movie-making technique during an understudied period.
It's the latest of the Kickstarter-funded restorations done by Ed Lorusso, with a lively score by Donald Drazin. It's not a terribly involved story, but Miss Mason, the youngest of the three Flugrath sisters (Edna Flugrath and Viola Dana were the elder two) offers a charming and lively performance in the lead role under the direction of Edward H. Griffith, one of twelves movies he directed in his first year behind the megaphone. Handsome photography of both the island and of Manhattan by Fred Brace show off the settings and the performers in a solid movie for 1917, which still charms in a well preserved copy from the Library of Congress. With Sally Crute and Jessie Stevens, it shows solid movie-making technique during an understudied period.