The Quest
Cast & Crew
Harry Pollard
Harry Pollard
Margarita Fischer
Lucille Ward
Joseph E. Singleton
Nan Christy
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
Millionaire bachelor John Douglas, disillusioned with vapid society girls, muses of a "dream girl." To avoid the coming social season, John sails to the South Seas, and after surviving a shipwreck, he reaches an island inhabited by a white race descended from shipwrecked English emigrants. He falls in love with Nai, the harp playing daughter of Chief Naeto, who also resembles his dream girl. When Nai's fiancé Kaura, the sub-chief, demands that they marry, John and Nai escape and are married by a sympathetic priest. After Kaura is killed by lightning while pursuing them, Naeto sends the priest to persuade Nai and John to return and rule the tribe. Spying a yacht offshore, John attempts to signal it until nightfall. He falls asleep guarding Nai, and starts to dream. The next day, the couple is rescued. In New York, Nai awkwardly adjusts to society's conventions and clothes. In a struggle with De Villiers, John's friend who flirts with Nai, John shoots Nai, but the shot awakens him from a dream. Influenced by his dream, he decides never to return to civilization and goes back with Nai and the priest to the tribe.
Director
Harry Pollard
Cast
Harry Pollard
Margarita Fischer
Lucille Ward
Joseph E. Singleton
Nan Christy
Robyn Adair
William Carroll
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
This film was the first feature produced by the American Film Mfg. Co. and was mentioned in reviews and ads as the first Mutual Masterpicture. According to a modern source, the film was scheduled to be the first Mutual Masterpicture, but Mutual president Harry E. Aitken, who also owned the Majestic Motion Picture Corp., refused to release it and released instead as Masterpictures, the films made by the Reliance-Majestic studio. When American owners John R. Freuler and Samuel S. Hutchinson returned from vacationing in Europe, Aitken told them that The Quest was not up to the Masterpicture standard. (Most reviews of the film praised it for its beautiful photography, interesting story and excellent acting.) Freuler and Hutchinson, according to the modern source, had the film released, and shortly after, Freuler was elected the new president of Mutual at a stockholders' meeting. Aitken formed the Triangle Film Corp. shortly after this, taking with him Mutual's three major producers: D. W. Griffith, Thomas H. Ince. and Mack Sennett. Some scenes in this film were shot on the Santa Cruz Islands, CA. Publicity for scenarist F. McGrew Willis claimed that he wrote the scenario, scene plot and synopsis for the film in one day.
