''The Crusher'' (

1917 Events Below, the events of World War I have the "WWI" prefix. January * January 9 – WWI – Battle of Rafa: The last substantial Ottoman Army garrison on the Sinai Peninsula is captured by the Egyptian Expeditionary Force's ...

) is a

silent film A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, when ...

, starring

Derwent Hall Caine Sir Derwent Hall Caine, 1st Baronet (12 September 18912 December 1971) was a British actor, publisher and Labour politician. Biography Caine was the son of British novelist Hall Caine and his wife Mary Chandler. He was born at Keswick in Cumb ...

and

Valda Valkyrien Valda Valkyrien (born Adele Frede; September 30, 1895 – October 22, 1956) was a Danish silent film actress. Early life and career Born in Reykjavík, Iceland, Valkyrien was born Adele Frede; although she may have been a student at the Royal ...

. Produced by the F. W. Stewart Co., at the Wharton Studios, under the directorship of J. K. Holbrook.

Plot

Arthur Morgan, an impulsive, reckless young Southerner, has invented an engine for submarine or airship. He gets in trouble in his old home and goes to New York to perfect his invention. He falls in love with a woman who is head of a foreign spy system. Her agent steals the formula and escapes to Europe. Arthur is crushed in spirit and in desperation tries to take his own life. The story is a parallel to the operations of extracting gold from the quartz. Morgan being the quartz, and New York City the crusher, and Dorothy Waring the amalogan which collects the grain of gold from the worthless crystal and makes it of value. In the picture is shown a battle between a submarine and a great trans-Atlantic liner, in which the submarine is sunk by a shot from the liner, but before sinking torpedoes the great ship.

Cast

as Arthur Morgan *

as Dorothy Waring * Harry Robinson as Henry Morgan * Richard Stewart as Daniel Cameron * Howard Cody as Big Little Jim * Robin Townley as Eli Brown * Bessie Wharton as Eloise Ormond

Production

The Crusher was started as a six-reel feature on September 10, 1917, the first film of the F.W. Stewart Company, a new film company in

Ithaca, New York Ithaca is a city in the Finger Lakes region of New York, United States. Situated on the southern shore of Cayuga Lake, Ithaca is the seat of Tompkins County and the largest community in the Ithaca metropolitan statistical area. It is named a ...

, managed by F.W Stewart, J.K. Holbrook and J.J. Hennessy. They used the plant of the Wharton Company at Renwick. The location scenes were filmed in the vicinity of Ithaca, Trumansburg and New York City. The interiors were made at Wharton Studio. Many locals were used in the filming of the ballroom scene.

Release

The five reel feature opened at The Strand October 4, 1917 for two days. It was described as “one of the best pictures produced in Ithaca” and that” Derwent Hall Caine is at his best as Arthur Morgan, the reckless young Southerner who invented the submarine engine”.

References

External links

''The Crusher'' (1917) at IMDB
{{DEFAULTSORT:Crusher, The 1917 films American black-and-white films American silent films 1910s American films 1910s English-language films