Seventeen | |
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Directed by | Robert G. Vignola |
Screenplay by | Booth Tarkington Harvey F. Thew |
Based on | Seventeen by Booth Tarkington |
Produced by | Daniel Frohman |
Starring | Louise Huff Jack Pickford |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 50 minutes |
Country | United States |
Languages | Silent film English intertitles |
Seventeen is a lost [1] 1916 American comedy silent film directed by Robert G. Vignola and written by Booth Tarkington and Harvey F. Thew. It is based on Tarkington's novel of the same name which was published earlier the same year. The film stars Louise Huff, Jack Pickford, Winifred Allen, Madge Evans, Walter Hiers, and Dick Lee. The film was released on November 2, 1916 by Paramount Pictures. [2] [3]
William Sylvanus Baxter has reached the age of 17, deluded himself into believing that he really ought to shave, and renounced "women" for all time. But the arrival of Lola Pratt and her toy dog Floppit reduces him to the final stages of adoration and subjugation. Having become Miss Pratt's abject slave, William becomes conscious of the defects of his 10-year-old sister Jane, who wolfs down all the bread and applesauce in the world, dresses too scantily in hot weather to suit his rigorous code, and comports herself in a manner that is trying to a young man in love. William's first humiliation comes when he encounters Miss Pratt and Floppit while assisting the hired man, Genesis, to carry home a second-hand wash-boiler. William flees in horror. At the first party given by his old, somewhat scorned friend May Parcher in honor of Miss Pratt, William surreptitiously dons his father's dress suit to counteract the effect of George Cooper's handsome new roadster, which seems to greatly impress Miss Pratt. But he is doomed to humiliation by the arrival of Genesis who announced that Mr. Baxter wants William to bring his clothes back at once. There is another party at the Parchers', in anticipation of which Mrs. Baxter has hidden her husband's dress clothes from William, so he finds himself without suitable apparel and is only relieved when his mother relents, but he arrives so late that Miss Pratt's dance card is completely full. But she takes pity on William and sits out a dance with him, during which she agrees to elope with him just for the fun of it. William takes the appointment seriously and gets a roadster by telling the salesman that he wants to test it out for his father; meanwhile, Miss Pratt decides to elope with George in his car. When they reach the minister's house they discover that George has forgotten the license, and the quarrel that follows shatters their romance. William, hastening in his new car to keep the appointment, rams a tree and wrecks the machine. Rushing ahead on foot, he arrives at the designated spot only to find May Parcher there with the news of Miss Pratt's elopement. Nothing is left for William but suicide and he prepares to die at home by the gas method, planning to save his good name by willing his dead body to the dental college, the proceeds to go to pay for the damage to the automobile. May Parcher's timely arrival with $50, collected by the sale of her pet pony, saves William from the terrible consequences of his despair, and in his gratitude to May for her devotion is the seed of a new romance.—Moving Picture World synopsis [4]
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Newton Booth Tarkington was an American novelist and dramatist best known for his novels The Magnificent Ambersons (1918) and Alice Adams (1921). He is one of only four novelists to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once, along with William Faulkner, John Updike, and Colson Whitehead. In the 1910s and 1920s he was considered the United States' greatest living author. Several of his stories were adapted to film.
John Charles Smith, known professionally as Jack Pickford, was a Canadian-American actor, film director and producer. He was the younger brother of actresses Mary and Lottie Pickford.
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Walter Hiers was an American silent film actor.
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Seventeen: A Tale of Youth and Summer Time and the Baxter Family Especially William is a humorous novel by Booth Tarkington that gently satirizes first love, in the person of a callow 17-year-old, William Sylvanus Baxter. Seventeen takes place in a small city in the Midwestern United States shortly before World War I. It was published as sketches in the Metropolitan Magazine in 1915 and 1916, and collected in a single volume by Harper and Brothers in 1916, when it was the bestselling novel in the United States.
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Benjamin Stannard Mears, also known as Ben Mears, Ben S. Mears, and Stannard Mears, was an American stage actor, vaudeville performer, and playwright. He is best known for the 1918 play Seventeen; an adaptation of Booth Tarkington's 1916 novel of the same name which he co-wrote with Hugh Stanislaus Stange.