The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1916)
Released 13th February 1916
Thomas Meighan and Charlotte Walker in Cecil B. DeMille's The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1916)
The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1916)
Running Time:50m, Drama, Production Company: Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Co., Inc.
Director: Cecil B. DeMille
Writer: Cecil B. DeMille, from the novel by John Fox Jr., and the play by Eugene Walters; Cinematography: Alvin Wyckoff
Cast: Charlotte Walker, Thomas Meighan, Theodore Roberts, Earle Foxe
Cecil B. DeMille’s 1916 version of The Trail of the Lonesome Pine may have been the first adaptation of John Fox Jr.’s novel to reach the screen, but it wasn’t the first to be filmed. In 1914, an independent company called the Broadway Picture Producing Company bought the film rights through Frank Henry Rice, a broker who held himself out as the authorised agent of Charles Scribner & Son’s, the publishers of the novel, which Eugene Walters had adapted for the stage for Klaw & Erlanger. The theatrical impresarios sued Broadway, claiming they had purchased ‘exclusive dramatic rights’ to the play, which included photoplays. It turned out that Rice had negotiated the rights with employees of Scribner’s who weren’t authorised to conduct rights negotiations. Judge Hunt of the United States District Court decreed in 1915 that the Broadway company should have ensured they were authorised before entering negotiations and enjoined them from manufacturing or selling their film. With the screen rights now available, the Lasky Company snapped them up.
Rugged Pittsburgh-born actor Thomas Meighan, a recent arrival from the stage who signed with Famous Players in 1915, was selected for leading man's duties. His romantic lead was Charlotte Walker, a forty-year-old actress who looked much younger than her age – just as well, considering June Tolliver, the spirited mountain girl that she plays, is a teenager in the novel. Walker was another recent arrival to Lasky’s company, although she had already worked under DeMille in Kindling (1915), and had played the part in Klaw & Erlanger’s stage play on Broadway. DeMille regular Theodore Roberts, who appeared in over twenty of the director’s films during his career, played Walker’s father, while rising young star Earle Foxe played the cousin who is in love with her character.
Filming of The Trail of the Lonesome Pine began on 28th December 1915. DeMille filmed exteriors in Santa Cruz, although filming in the redwood mountains was delayed when a heavy snowstorm forced the company to abandon its journey to the location.
Charlotte Walker in Cecil B. DeMille's The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1916)
Meighan plays Jack Hale, a revenue officer who travels to Virginia to investigate reports of illegal whisky stills near the Lonesome Pine Trail. When Judd Tolliver (Theodore Roberts), the head of the moonshine racket, hears of Hale’s impending arrival, he sends his daughter, June (Charlotte Walker), to delay him. This she does by pretending to have sprained her ankle and persuading Hale to carry her to her father’s cabin. There, the moonshine gang capture him to allow them time to spirit their whisky out of the county. After some time, Hale escapes, but by then he has fallen for the beautiful June, much to the anger of her cousin Dave (Earle Foxe), who also loves her.
Meighan injured himself during the filming of the escape scene, in which he holds his bound wrists over a flame to release himself. The rope caught fire and burned him before crew members could extinguish it.
The Trail of the Lonesome Pine is a retrograde step for DeMille after producing such classics as The Cheat and The Golden Chance, although there’s no doubt he delivers a crowd-pleaser with some decent action and uncomplicated motives. Once again, DeMille makes good use of lighting, but the intertitles which enunciate characters’ speech grate a little. In his book, Cecil B. DeMille’s Hollywood, Robert S. Birchard praised DeMille’s use of titles in this movie, favourably comparing them to those used by Griffith, and it’s true that most titles from this period described the action the audience was about to see rather than attempting any kind of literary contribution to the action. DeMille’s titles here do often immerse the audience in the scene's actuality in a way that others didn’t, but lines like “I’ll git him to the house fer ye!” are just as likely to distract a viewer from the picture as draw them in.
Thomas Meighan and Charlotte Walker in Cecil B. DeMille's The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1916)
Filming was completed on 20th January 1916. Upon completion, the Santa Cruz Chamber of Commerce named one of the towering redwood trees DeMille in honour of the visit by the director and his company. It also proposed ‘to build and equip him a studio, the use of which should be gratis, if he would but induce the Lasky company to locate a producing company there.’
Legend has it that John Fox Jr., the author of the novel, and Eugene Walters, creator of the stage play, watched the film together. “At least they kept the lonesome pine,” said one. “No,” replied the other, “it was a redwood.” DeMille himself alluded to the story in his autobiography, but also gave a reason for such practices. “Authors and readers alike often complain that motion pictures distort or destroy the books on which they are based. Sometimes the complaint is justified… More often, though, I believe, that complaint arises from a misunderstanding of the film medium… The novelist uses words, with all their economy and all their allusive power. In one sentence he can portray a character and reveal a lifetime. But we cannot photograph the sentence: it may be necessary to write into a film scenario a whole sequence, which was not in the novel at all, to convey… a background of character or an element of plot essential to the story.”
The dialogue might have been steeped in dialect, and the story far removed from its literary source, but audiences enjoyed it. So did the critics. “Cecil B. DeMille has made a truly artistic picture,” The Motion Picture News enthused. “It might be described as a picture of the ‘better sort.’” Variety described it as “a remarkable motion picture…a corking story exceedingly well told in pictures,” while W. Stephen Bush, writing in The Moving Picture World, singled Theodore Roberts out for praise: “Theodore Roberts in undoubtedly the greatest asset of this feature. His characterization of the old mountaineer was the finest piece of acting seen on any screen in many a month. Indeed, I feel tempted to doubt whether all the subtle points, all the details of his peerless impersonation can possibly be appreciated at only one view of this feature.”
DeMille certainly liked the material. He returned to it in 1936 to make a Technicolor remake starring Henry Fonda, Sylvia Sidney, and Fred MacMurray. Famous Players also remade the picture in 1923 with Charles Maigne at the helm. It starred Mary Miles Minter as June Tolliver, in her last role before retiring amid the scandal surrounding the murder of the director William Desmond Taylor.
Sources: Cecil B. DeMille’s Hollywood, Robert S. Birchard; Cecil B. DeMille: A Life in Art, Simon Louvish; The Autobiography of Cecil B. DeMille, Cecil B. DeMille; The Complete Films of Cecil B. DeMille, Gene Ringgold, DeWitt Bodeen; Motion Picture News.