Who's Your Brother?
Cast & Crew
John G. Adolfi
Edith Taliaferro
Frank Burbeck
Paul Panzer
E. Coit Albertson
Herbert Fortier
Film Details
Synopsis
Stephen Field, a Jewish financier, takes great pleasure in philanthropic work at a community service center in the U.S. His daughter Esther devotes her time to entertaining returning soldiers in a canteen. When he reads in a newspaper about massacres of Jews and Armenians in Europe, and the suffering and starvation among other peoples there, Stephen remembers having lost his own wife and young son in a massacre years earlier. At the canteen, Esther meets Robert Graham, who suffers from fainting spells, the result of a war wound. Graham falls in love with Esther, much to the chagrin of his anti-Semitic father. Esther is also courted by the brilliant Jewish surgeon, William Morris. Esther's affection for Morris leads the jealous Graham to lash out at his rival with anti-Semitic invective even though Esther gently refuses Morris' marriage proposal. Graham loses control of his high-powered car due to a fainting spell, and the car goes over a precipice and turns over on top of him. Morris is the only person who can save his life, but the surgeon hesitates, fearing that failure would be interpreted as jealousy and thus compromise his professional integrity. Esther pleads with Morris to perform the operation, and he finally consents, sacrificing his own happiness for the woman he loves. The operation is proclaimed a surgical miracle, and Esther chooses to marry the man who performed that miracle.
Director
John G. Adolfi
Cast
Edith Taliaferro
Frank Burbeck
Paul Panzer
E. Coit Albertson
Herbert Fortier
Gladden James
Elizabeth Garrison
Elizabeth Kennedy
Edith Stockton
Film Details
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
This film was the first production of the Curtiss Pictures Corp. It was re-released in 1920 by Equity Pictures Corp. under the title Keep to The Right. Sources disagree about the massacre of the Field family early in the film: Moving Picture World states that it was a Cossack massacre in Russia, while the Community Motion Picture Bureau says it occurred in Turkey by Turkish soldiers. A report from the Community Motion Picture Bureau noted, "All through the film were generous titles impressive of the need of brotherhood and brotherly love among men, suggesting that religion should be on a broad basis that would overlook racial and social boundaries and would consist primarily and solely of a love towards one's fellow men." According to Wid's, the film was endorsed by the New York Federation of Churches. On actress Edith Taliaferro, critic Helen Rockwell of Exhibitor's Trade Review wrote, "She has a dazzling smile and a wistful expression that are as magnetic and as full of personality as Mary [Pickford]'s curls or Dorothy Gish's walk."
