A Florida Enchantment

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A Florida Enchantment
A Florida Enchantment.jpg
Edith Storey as Lillian Travers/Lawrence Talbot (right) and as Jane, "Miss Travers' mulatto maid" (left)
Directed bySidney Drew
Written byMarguerite Bertsch
Eugene Mullin
Produced bySidney Drew
StarringEdith Storey
Sidney Drew
Cinematography
Production
companies

Distributed byGeneral Film Co.
Release date
  • 1914 (1914)
Running time
5 reels, approx. 63 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguagesSilent film
English intertitles

A Florida Enchantment (1914) is a silent film directed by Sidney Drew and released by the Vitagraph studio. The feature-length comedy/fantasy was shot in and around St. Augustine, Florida, where its story is set. It is notable for its cross-dressing lead characters, much later discussed as lesbian, gay, and transgender.[1][2] The film is based on the 1891 novel and 1896 play (now lost) of the same name written by Fergus Redmond and Archibald Clavering Gunter.

Plot[]

In the film, Lillian Travers, a wealthy Northern woman about to be married, visits her aunt in Florida. While there, she stops in a curiosity shop and buys a small casket which contains a note and a vial of seeds. At her aunt's house she reads the note which explains that the seeds change men into women and vice versa. Angry with her fiancé, Fred, Lillian decides to test the effects of the seeds. The next morning, Lillian discovers that she has transformed into a man. Lillian's transformation into Lawrence Talbot has also sometimes been read as a transformation into a butch lesbian. This reading is bolstered by the later transformation of Lillian's fiancé into what could be an effeminate gay man. However, as Lillian and her fiancé are shown attracted both to each other and to the same sex (albeit at different times), the film has also been considered to have the first documented appearance of bisexual characters in an American motion picture.[3]

Cast[]

  • Edith Storey - Lillian Travers/Lawrence Talbot
  • Sidney Drew - Dr. Frederick Cassadene
  • - Jane
  • - Constancia Oglethorpe
  • Charles Kent - Major Horton
  • - Bessie Horton
  • - Stella Lovejoy
  • - Malvina
  • - Stockton Remington
  • - Charley Wilkes
  • Frank O'Neil - Gustavus Duncan

Production background[]

The film is also known for its use of white actors in blackface, an aspect carefully dissected in Siobhan B. Somerville's book (Duke University Press, 2000). Since its inclusion in Vito Russo's 1981 book and the documentary film adaptation, The Celluloid Closet (Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, 1995), A Florida Enchantment has been seen as one of the earliest screen representations of homosexuality and cross-dressing in American culture.

In Popular Culture[]

The film is a central element of the 2020 novel Antkind by Charlie Kaufman.[4]

References[]

  1. ^ Horak, Laura (2016). Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-Dressed Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema, 1908-1934. Rutgers University Press. p. 107. ISBN 978-0813574837.
  2. ^ Bean, Jennifer M.; Negra, Diane, eds. (2002). A Feminist Reader in Early Cinema. Duke University Press. pp. 251–252. ISBN 0822330253.
  3. ^ "Bisexuality in Film". glbtq. Archived from the original on 2012-10-15. Retrieved 2012-11-06.
  4. ^ Charlie Kaufman's Debut Novel Reveals His Genius Has Its Limits ("The novel's premise has B traveling to St. Augustine, Florida, to research an obscure silent film about a gender-bending couple. (The movie, A Florida Enchantment, is real.)"). Retrieved February 28, 2021.

External links[]

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