Men Who Have Made Love to Me | |
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Directed by | Arthur Berthelet |
Written by | E. C. Lowe Mary MacLane |
Based on | I, Mary MacLane by Mary McLane |
Produced by | George K. Spoor |
Starring | Mary MacLane Ralph Graves Paul Harvey |
Production company | Perfection Pictures / Essanay Film Manufacturing Company |
Distributed by | George Kleine System |
Release date |
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Running time | 70 minutes (7 reels) |
Country | United States |
Language | Silent (English intertitles) |
Men Who Have Made Love to Me is a 1918 American silent biographical film starring Mary MacLane, based on her book I, Mary MacLane (1917). [1] It was directed by Arthur Berthelet [2] [3] and produced by early American filmmaker George K. Spoor.
The story of six affairs of the heart, drawn from controversial feminist author Mary MacLane's 1910 syndicated article(s) by the same name, later published in book form in 1917. None of MacLane's affairs - with "the bank clerk," "the prize-fighter," "the husband of another," and so on - last, and in each of them MacLane emerges dominant. Re-enactments of the love affairs are interspersed with MacLane addressing the camera (while smoking), and talking contemplatively with her maid about the meaning and prospects of love. [4]
This film represents the earliest recorded breaking of the fourth wall in serious cinema, as the enigmatic author - who portrays herself - interrupts the vignettes onscreen to address the audience directly. [5] This film is also the first in which writer, star, narrator, and subject are unified.
It is not known whether the film currently survives, [6] and Men Who Have Made Love to Me is now thought to be a lost film.
Samuel Alfred De Grasse was a Canadian actor. He was the uncle of cinematographer Robert De Grasse.
Jack Pickford, was a Canadian-American actor, film director and producer. He was the younger brother of actresses Mary and Lottie Pickford.
Mary MacLane was a controversial Canadian-born American writer whose frank memoirs helped usher in the confessional style of autobiographical writing. MacLane was known as the "Wild Woman of Butte".
George Kirke Spoor was an early film pioneer who, with Gilbert M. "Broncho Billy" Anderson, founded Essanay Studios in Chicago in 1907. He was a founding partner of V-L-S-E, Incorporated, a film distribution firm, in 1915.
Elsie Jane Wilson was a cinema actress, director, and writer during the early film era. She took part in the productions of the silent film era and starred in over thirty films. Between the years of 1916 and 1919, Wilson was credited for producing, writing two films, and directing eleven films. She was best known in the genres of dramas and comedy dramas.
Charles G. Rosher, A.S.C. was an English-born cinematographer who worked from the early days of silent films through the 1950s.
Charles Stanton Ogle was an American stage and silent-film actor. He was the first actor to portray Frankenstein's monster in a motion picture in 1910 and played Long John Silver in Treasure Island in 1920.
Milton George Gustavus Sills was an American stage and film actor of the early twentieth century.
Marshall Ambrose "Mickey" Neilan was an American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter, whose work in films began in the early silent era.
Joseph Henry Kolker was an American stage and film actor and director.
Creighton Hale was an Irish-American theatre, film, and television actor whose career extended more than a half-century, from the early 1900s to the end of the 1950s.
Violet Mersereau was an American stage and film actress. Over the course of her screen career, Mersereau appeared in over 100 short and silent film features.
Mary Carr, was an American film actress and was married to the actor William Carr. She appeared in more than 140 films from 1915 to 1956. She was given some of filmdoms plum mother roles in silent pictures, especially Fox's 1920 Over the Hill to the Poorhouse, which was a great success. She was interred in Calvary Cemetery. Carr bore a strong resemblance to Lucy Beaumont, another famous character actress of the time who specialized in mother roles. As older actresses such as Mary Maurice and Anna Townsend passed on, Carr, still in her forties, seem to inherit all the matriarchal roles in silent films.
Winter Amos Hall was a New Zealand actor of the silent era who later appeared in sound films. He performed in more than 120 films between 1916 and 1938. Prior to that, he had a career as a stage actor in Australia and the United States. In sound films, he was frequently typecast as a clergyman.
Shirley Mason was an American actress of the silent era.
Arthur Rolette Berthelet was an American actor, stage and film director, dialogue director, and scriptwriter. With regard to screen productions, he is best remembered for directing the 1916 crime drama Sherlock Holmes starring William Gillette, an actor who since 1899 had distinguished himself on the Broadway stage and at other prominent theatrical venues with his numerous, "definitive" portrayals of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's great fictional detective. In 1918, Berthelet also directed the controversial author and feminist Mary MacLane in Men Who Have Made Love to Me, a production notable for being among the first cinematic dramas to break the "fourth wall" and among the earliest American film projects to bring together on screen a woman's work as a published author, "scenarist", actor, and narrator through the use of intertitles.
Gladys Leslie Moore was an American actress in silent film, active in the 1910s and 1920s. Though less-remembered than superstars like Mary Pickford, she had a number of starring roles from 1917 to the early 1920s and was one of the young female stars of her day.
George Kleine was an American film producer and distributor and cinema pioneer.
Riders of the Purple Sage is a 1918 American silent Western film directed by Frank Lloyd and starring William Farnum, Mary Mersch, and William Scott. The film is about a former Texas Ranger who goes after a group of Mormons who have abducted his married sister. This Frank Lloyd silent film was the first of five film adaptations of Zane Grey's 1912 novel.
Bluebird Photoplays was an American film production company that filmed at Universal Pictures studios in California and New Jersey, and distributed its films via Universal Pictures during the silent film era. It had a $500,000 studio in New Jersey.
"It was a subsidiary of Universal Pictures and employed Universal stars and used Universal’s facilities but the pictures were marketed independently from Carl Laemmle’s umbrella company."—Anke Brouwers
Media related to Men Who Have Made Love to Me at Wikimedia Commons