Way Down East

Way Down East is a 1920 American silent romantic drama film directed by D. W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish. It is one of four film adaptations of the melodramatic 19th century play Way Down East by Lottie Blair Parker. There were two earlier silent versions and one sound version in 1935 starring Henry Fonda.

Griffith's version is particularly remembered for its exciting climax in which Lillian Gish's character is rescued from doom on an icy river. Some sources, quoting newspaper ads of the time, say a sequence was filmed in an early color process, possibly Technicolor or Prizmacolor.

Plot

The rich, typified by the handsome man-about-town Lennox (Lowell Sherman), are exceptionally selfish and think only of their own pleasure.

Anna (Lillian Gish) is a poor country girl whom Lennox tricks into a fake wedding. When she becomes pregnant, he leaves her. She has the baby, named Trust Lennox, on her own.

When the baby dies she wanders until she gets a job with Squire Bartlett (Burr McIntosh). David (Richard Barthelmess), Squire Bartlett's son, falls for her, but she rejects him due to her past. Then Lennox shows up lusting for another local girl, Kate. Seeing Anna, he tries to get her to leave, but she refuses to go, although she promises to say nothing about his past.

Way Down East (1935 film)

Way Down East is a 1935 romantic drama film directed by Henry King, starring Rochelle Hudson and Henry Fonda, and featuring Slim Summerville, Margaret Hamilton, Andy Devine and Spring Byington.

The picture is a remake of the classic 1920 D. W. Griffith silent film Way Down East starring Lillian Gish, which in turn was based on the 1897 stage play by Lottie Blair Parker.

Plot summary

The story centers upon a starving, impoverished gamin who lost everything after a wicked millionaire tricked her into a marriage and impregnated her. The baby doesn't survive the ordeal and the poor girl ends up sheltered by a puritanical farm family. While there, she falls in love with the son.

Cast

Charlotte Blair Parker

Charlotte Blair Parker (1858 - January 5, 1937) was a noted playwright and aspiring actress in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She began her theatrical career as an actress, eventually playing opposite John Edward McCullough, Mary Anderson, and Dion Boucicault. Writing under the pen name Lottie Blair Parker, she wrote about a dozen produced plays but is remembered most for three popular stage plays produced between 1897 and 1906: Way Down East, Under Southern Skies and The Redemption of David Corson. Of the three, Way Down East, produced in 1898, was the most successful, proving to be one of the most popular American plays of its time, steadily performed for two decades

Early years

Born 1858, in Oswego, New York, Charlotte Blair Parker was the daughter of George and Emily Hitchcock Blair. She married Harry D. Parker. Charlotte Blair Parker died January 5, 1937, in Great Neck, New York.

Career

Charlotte "Lottie" Blair Parker's theatrical career started as an actress, studying for the stage under the noted Shakespearian actor, Wyzeman Marshall in Boston. She performed with the stock company of the Boston Theatre, and later toured with such major figures as the Czech tragic actress Mme. Janauschek and American actor-producer of poetic drama Lawrence Barrett. Parker married a theatrical manager. She turned to playwriting when White Roses, a one-act play she submitted to a New York Herald contest in 1892, received honorable mention.