A Novel Experiment

A story such as this should be convincing for, aside from the main idea, it presents nothing novel nor exciting. A successful novelist might very well woo and marry a girl and keep her in ignorance that he was famous till after the ceremony, particularly the kind of man who impersonates tramps to get realism. Perhaps the reason why this story doesn't, in its early scenes, convince us that, except the novelist, its characters and their place in the story are very obscure. The novelist's tramp's costume is good enough, but it is not until Arnold proposes to Smith, the novelist, whom he thinks is a tramp, that he woo and marry Eleanor, do we pick him out from all the others as having a special part in the story. Even then this reviewer wasn't sure just why he wanted to be revenged on her. From that point on the story is clear enough. Yet girls like Eleanor don't marry men they know so little about. If the climax doesn't wholly convince us, it is well worked out. The idea behind this picture is novel to this reviewer though many plays, old and new, have approached it. - The Moving Picture World, June 10, 1911