Name: The Shell Game
Released: 1918
Cast: Emmy Wehlen, Henry Kolker, Joseph Kilgour, Fanny Cogan, Ricca Allen

Cast & Crew

Film Details

Also Known As

Good Will and Almond Shells

Release Date

Mar 4, 1918

Premiere Information

not available

Production Company

Metro Pictures Corp.

Distribution Company

Metro Pictures Corp.

Country

United States

Screenplay Information

Based on the short story "Good Will and Almond Shells" by Kenneth L. Roberts in The Saturday Evening Post (22 Dec 1917).

Technical Specs

Sound

Silent

Color

Black and White

Film Length

5 reels

Synopsis

Acting on his belief that most people become sentimental at Christmas time and are therefore easy prey, New York confidence man "Silk" Wilkins ingratiates himself with millionaire Lawrence Gray, whose wife and little daughter Zelda were lost in a flood eighteen years earlier. After promising to find Gray's daughter, Silk returns to his boardinghouse, where he finds Alice Sheldon attempting to escape her desperate financial straits through suicide. Silk convinces Alice to pose as Zelda Gray and then notifies Lawrence via a note placed in an almond shell that he has found the lost daughter. Lawrence treats Alice so kindly that when Silk demands payment from her on Christmas morning, she refuses. Lawrence, who has overheard the conversation, enters and laughingly reveals that he had known of the frame-up all along. Grateful to Silk for finding him a wife, Lawrence writes the confidence man a large check.