The Triumph of Right

When Anne Schaeffer's medicine runs out, husband George Stanley buys a horse so he can ride for more medicine. The horse turns out to be stolen. You know what they do to horse thieves in the West in this exceedingly overwrought western.

The camera work is up to standards, and the coup-counting cinephile will want to look at this two-reel movie to see Mildred Harris, the first Mrs. Charles Chaplin, when she was a child actress. After that, the problems start with George Stanley, who can't act for beans. It is his second movie, so perhaps I should cut him some slack, but it's hard to do so, considering that his character in the movie is a thoughtless idiot, who has to be rescued from a gunfight by Miss Harris. When he strikes a pose and pulls the sheet from Miss Schaeffer's face to show that she is dead, I was struck by the thought that she made a far more convincing corpse than he a cowboy,

It's certainly not a kind thought, but the other problem with this movie is that it is clearly padded. I like incidents in a movie, especially a western, but the dispute over cards, the small amount of horse-riding, the ramshackle shack are simply a matter of putting in those things a western fan will want to see. I suspect that director had no more interest in making this movie than you should in seeing it.