Hail the Woman

Hail the Woman
Hail the Woman
	Silver Sheet cover, colour
Directed by	John Griffith Wray
Written by	C. Gardner Sullivan
Produced by	Thomas H. Ince
Starring	Florence Vidor; Lloyd Hughes; Theodore Roberts;
Cinematography	Henry Sharp (*French Wikipedia)
Production; company	Thomas H. Ince Productions
Distributed by	Associated Producers
Release date	November 28, 1921;
Running time	80 minutes
Country	United States
Language	Silent (English intertitles)

Film still with Roberts and Vidor

Hail the Woman is a 1921 American silent drama film directed by John Griffith Wray. Produced by Thomas Ince, it stars Florence Vidor as a woman who takes a stand against the hypocrisy of her father and brother, played by Theodore Roberts and Lloyd Hughes respectively.

Plot[]

Oliver Beresford is a controlling and uncompromisingly rigid father. When shameful stories about his daughter Judith surface, he bans her from his house. Her brother David is training for the ministry at his father's insistence, but he has secretly wed Nan Higgins, the stepdaughter of an odd-jobs man, and has fathered a child. Oliver Beresford, learning the truth, buys the silence of the odd-jobs man who then evicts the pregnant Nan from his home. Nan travels to New York where she becomes a prostitute after the baby is born. Seeking a career, Judith also goes to New York where she finds Nan and her baby just as the young woman is dying. Judith decides to raise the child, and later she returns to New England, on the day that David is to be ordained, and confronts him with the child in front of the congregation.^[1]

Cast[]

Florence Vidor as Judith Beresford
Lloyd Hughes as David Beresford
Theodore Roberts as Oliver Beresford
Gertrude Claire as Mrs. Beresford
Madge Bellamy as Nan Higgins
Tully Marshall as "Odd Jobs Man"
Vernon Dent as Joe Hurd
Edward Martindel as Wyndham Gray
Charles Meredith as Richard Stuart
Mathilde Brundage as Mrs. Stuart
Eugene Hoffman as The Baby
Muriel Frances Dana as David Junior

Preservation status[]

Complete copies of the film survive. The Library of Congress holds a 35mm nitrate negative and a 35mm acetate master positive. The film is also preserved in the archives of the Museum of Modern Art in New York as well as in the Cinematheque Royale de Belgique in Brussels.^[2]

References[]

^ ^a ^b "Hail The Woman". Catalog of Feature Films. American Film Institute. Retrieved March 9, 2016.
^ David Pierce (March 7, 2016). "Hail the Woman/Florence Vidor (motion picture)". American Silent Film Survival Catalog. The Library of Congress.