Any of you remember the last time I described a few frames of an old silent film I found, asking if anyone recognized them? I’ve found about 7000 more.
These are of a different movie, not the whole thing, but 400’ of it. Sadly, the title card is not on either of the reels I have, so I can’t begin to look for the rest of this film. I’ve described it and taken several pictures of important frames (badly, I know–I don’t have a film scanner, I’m just taking them through a loupe). There’s a good bit of memorable action as well as close-ups of three actors, so I hope it can be easily identified.
It’s got “Seagrue and his lawless band”, ring any bells? Sort of a military/western, I’d describe it.
The AFI site returns a 1926 film, “Whispering Smith” with the search word “Seagrue”.
It seems “Seagrue” is a character played by Nelson McDowell in that film.
Here is the cast of “Whispering Smith”. There are no pictures here though. Maybe some Googling can get you some headshots to compare to your frames?
After a touch more research, maybe not. Here is the hero boy in “Whispering Smith”. Played by Frank Coghlan, Jr. Doesn’t look much liek the hero boy in your film I’m afraid. Sorry… I tried.
Coghlan must have acted in one of the remakes, he couldn’t have done the 1916 version–that was the year he was born. There are more names listed on the IMDb for the 1916 one, but I’d guess William Behrens was the boy in it (several of the actors don’t have birth dates listed, but he would have been 10 years old at the time).
Whispering Smith looks promising. The dates match (1916), both have a character named Seagrue, both involve a rancho. However, I don’t see anything that suggests Whispering Smith had a military element, and I don’t see anything having to do with a railroad on my reels (although maybe that happened earlier in the film).
If I could find photos of the actors listed as being in it, that would either cinch it or rule it out.
Apart from that one cite, everywhere else says the first film was made in 1916. I think that 1915 date might be an error.