The Drunkard
Cast & Crew
Albert Herman
James Murray
Janet Chandler
Clara K. Young
Bryant Washburn
Theodore Lorch
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
A team of down-and-out theatrical producers decides to stage a production of the Victorian melodrama The Drunkard in a music hall and force their idle relatives to perform the play. The play's program encourages the beer-drinking audience to "hiss the villain" and "applaud the hero," and throughout the performance, the audience yells epithets at the players. The play's story concerns the widow Wilson and her daughter Mary, who are told by the villain, Squire Cribbs, that their cottage will have to be sold because the landowner, Edward Middleton, is a dissolute man who is "reckless, wild and giddy" and will have no pity on them. The widow tells Mary to visit Edward with their last thirty dollars, which was earmarked for fuel, and pay the rent. Meanwhile, Cribbs, a lawyer whom Edward believes was a friend of his father, tells Edward to acquire the Wilson cottage and its adjacent lands, thereby securing free access to the attractive Mary. The kindhearted Edward is aghast at Cribbs' insinuation that he would take advantage of Mary and, instead, falls in love with her and tells her to keep her money as a portion of her dowry and marry him. Cribbs then tries to pay Edward's foster brother William for an invitation to the wedding, but William refuses his bribe. Cribbs then addresses the audience and announces that William's half-witted sister Agnes knows too much. Agnes went crazy after Cribbs ruined her fiancé, who died in a drunken fit. When Cribbs tries to whip Agnes, William enters and saves her. Edward and Mary are wed, and years later, Edward has become a drunkard. When he is knocked out in a barroom brawl, he wakes and has a somber realization of what he has become. He then returns home, again drunk, to find the widow Wilson dying. After she dies, Edward abandons Mary and their little girl Julia in their sorrow, shouting, "curse me as your destroyer." Later, Mary gets work as a seamstress in New York, where she has gone seeking Edward, and she and Julia are cold and starving. Cribbs enters and lunges at Mary, but William saves her and Cribbs shouts that he will be revenged. Edward, meanwhile, wakes up in a barn and, in a fit of delirium tremens, sees snakes. He is about to take an overdose of powder when a reformer named Artie Renslow enters to rescue him from the "abyss into which he has fallen." Gates, a Middleton villager, then tells farmer Stevens, with whom Edward had the brawl, that he was told that Cribbs committed heavy forgery on the firm of Winslow and Company. In the meantime, Agnes is cured and she tries to find William to tell him Cribbs's secret, while William is determined to catch Cribbs and reunite Edward and Mary. Agnes then tells William that she found a mound of dirt beneath a tree and, digging, found the will of Edward's grandfather, which left all to Edward's father. The will under which Cribbs acted was a forgery. To catch Cribbs, Artie has him incriminate himself by digging for the will beneath the tree. When he shouts that the deed he buried is gone, the sheriff arrests him. The Middleton estate is restored to Edward and Mary, and Edward returns to his wife and child, sober. Edward then thanks Artie for his help and recites the poem: "There came a change/The cloud rolled off/A light fell on my brain/And like the passing of a dream that cometh not again/The blackness of my spirit fled/I saw the gulf before/And shuddered at the waste behind/And am a man once more." At the urging of the audience, Mary and Edward kiss.
Director
Albert Herman
Cast
James Murray
Janet Chandler
Clara K. Young
Bryant Washburn
Theodore Lorch
George Stewart
Eric Mayne
Shirley Jean
Geri Foster
Vena Calvert
Snub Pollard
Victor Potel
Joey Ray
Monty Carter
Jack Lipson
Lafe Mckee
Rosemary Theby
Vera Steadman
Pat O'malley
Bobby Nelson
Gertrude Astor
John Elliott
Jerome Storm
Helen Gibson
Ruth Hyatt
Joe De Grasse
Crew
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
In the onscreen credits, producer Bert Sternbach's first name is misspelled "Bern." According to reviews, the play The Drunkard was first staged by P. T. Barnum in 1843. A modern source states that it was staged in Barnum's American Museum in New York, and a copy of the script was reportedly found in 1926 among some old manuscripts in Berkeley, CA. On July 6, 1933, the play opened in Los Angeles at the Theatre Mart and became a local institution. In 1953, the original melodrama was adapted into a musical called The Wayward Way. In total, the play and the musical ran for twenty-six years, closing October 17, 1959 after 9,477 performances. News items state that the original play was also known as The Fallen Saved. According to a January 22, 1935 Hollywood Reporter news item, Exploitation Pictures acquired the talkie rights to The Drunkard and planned to start production February 1, 1935. Exploitation Pictures was related to Weiss Productions and Stage and Screen Productions, Inc. According to a March 7, 1935 Hollywood Reporter news item, production had been rescheduled for 12 or 13 Mar. The title was not found in copyright records, although a 1935 copyright statement is listed on the film. The film included many silent film stars. Hollywood Reporter announced on July 15, 1935 that Weiss Productions would be "roadshowing" the film, with several of the stars making a personal appearance; the first show was set for San Francisco on Labor Day. The Box Office review states that "it is hard to determine whether or not [the film] is really an attempt at burlesque or that of knocking out a certain amount of footage within a limited budget." Daily Variety announced on April 20, 1938 that Warner Bros. was negotiating to buy and film their own version of The Drunkard. No evidence that Warner Bros. ever made the picture has been found. In 1940, RKO released a version of The Drunkard called The Villain Still Pursued Her, starring Buster Keaton, produced by Harold B. Franklin, and directed by Edward F. Cline.
