Millionaire's son William Stowell (as Roger Curwell) wants to be an artist, instead of working in the family business. Disinherited and desolate, Mr. Stowell winds up in the seedy "Barbary Coast" of San Francisco. A watering hole and dance hall known as the "Sailor's Rest" is where Stowell spars with bar owner Alfred Allen (as Hell Morgan) and meets the older man's daughter Dorothy Phillips (as Lola). She persuades daddy to hire Stowell as a piano player. As you might expect, love blooms between Stowell and Ms. Phillips, but villainous Lon Chaney (as Sleter Noble) wants "Hell Morgan's Girl" for himself...
This type of story was a proved, successful formula, so it was only natural to see Universal put its popular trio into one. Considering Mr. Chaney surpassed his co-stars in popularity, and still enjoys a great following, it is safe to assume no prints of "Hell Morgan's Girl" have survived, or one would have certainly surfaced by now. This was a typical story for the time, bordering on sordidness for its appeal, plus the rising popularity of Phillips, Stowell and Chaney. It was set in San Francisco just before the 1906 earthquake, so viewers knew a divine intervention might shake some sinfulness out of the situation.
"Hell Morgan's Girl" was a critical and popular favorite. "Variety" thought, "The scenes depicting life in Frisco just prior to the earthquake rank with the best of that sort of motion picture work. The 'dive' stuff is so vivid that its realism is positively startling." Emphasizing its seedy subject matter, "Moving Picture World" recommended against showing the film to "refined audiences or before children; for while it may be a perfect typification of that hole of vice, the realism of its staging makes it the more unwholesome. Those looking for maudlin types will be attracted to the picture, for it abounds in them."
"Photoplay" reviewer Julian Johnson thought the plot, "Worked successfully: a rich man's son, disowned by his father because he refuses to forsake art for business, fails to make art go, and becomes a multiple-reel drunkard. His redemption must (be met) by a bad woman, according to the formula, or at least by a woman who has the externals of wickedness," and correctly advised, "Keep your eyes on Dorothy Phillips, the temperamental eyeful who plays Lola. She is coming up like a Fourth-of-July rocket, and if her crude talent is properly developed, she will be a supreme mistress of melodrama."
****** Hell Morgan's Girl (3/5/17) Joseph de Grasse ~ William Stowell, Dorothy Phillips, Lon Chaney, Alfred Allen
