The Awakening of Ruth | |
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Directed by | Edward H. Griffith |
Written by | Lucien Hubbard |
Starring | Shirley Mason George J. Forth Donald Hall |
Cinematography | Fred S. Brace |
Production companies | Perfection Pictures Edison Studios |
Distributed by | George Kleine System |
Release date |
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Running time | 50 minutes |
Country | United States |
Languages | Silent English intertitles |
The Awakening of Ruth is a 1917 American silent drama film directed by Edward H. Griffith and starring Shirley Mason, George J. Forth and Donald Hall. [1]
Edward Lorusso produced the film for video in 2023 with a score by David Drazin.
Ruth Hoagland lives on an island near Massachusetts, with only her father for company. Her father, Reuben, is a fisherman who spends his time searching for buried treasure. One day, Ruth meets a yachtsman named Bob Winthrop, who is vacationing on the island. Bob and Ruth fall in love, but Bob has to return to his home in New York. After a year, Bob has forgotten Ruth. Then, Ruth finds two chests in a cave. She also finds her father, unconscious from a fall from a cliff. Ruth goes to Massachusetts for help, finding Reverend Josiah Arbuthnot and Dr. William Strong. Upon their return, they find Ruth's father dead. Dr. Strong offers to marry Ruth, but she refuses, still waiting for Bob's return. She divides the chests with Dr. Strong and Reverend Arbuthnot. Dr. Strong, after discovering that the chests only have damp gunpowder, withdraws his savings. He gives the money to Ruth, telling her he got it from selling the items in the chests. He tells her to go to New York and develop her voice. After learning that Bob moved on, Ruth goes back to the island to get ready for Broadway. While back on the island, Ruth discovers the sacrifice Dr. Strong made.
Winthrop is a town in Suffolk County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 19,316 at the 2020 census. Winthrop is an ocean-side suburban community in Greater Boston situated at the north entrance to Boston Harbor, close to Logan International Airport. It is located on a peninsula, 1.6 square miles (4.2 km2) in area, connected to Revere by a narrow isthmus and to multiple portions of Boston by a bridge over the harbor inlet to the Belle Isle Marsh Reservation in the Neighborhood of East Boston, a shared border at the Boston Logan International Airport, and at Deer Island.
Anne Hutchinson was a Puritan spiritual advisor, religious reformer, and an important participant in the Antinomian Controversy which shook the infant Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1636 to 1638. Her strong religious convictions were at odds with the established Puritan clergy in the Boston area and her popularity and charisma helped create a theological schism that threatened the Puritan religious community in New England. She was eventually tried and convicted, then banished from the colony with many of her supporters.
The Boston Brahmins or Boston elite are members of Boston's historic upper class. In the late 19th century through the mid-20th century, they were often associated with a cultivated New England accent, Harvard University, Anglicanism, and traditional British-American customs and clothing. Descendants of the earliest English colonists are typically considered to be the most representative of the Boston Brahmins. They are considered White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs).
Mary Dyer was an English and colonial American Puritan-turned-Quaker who was hanged in Boston, Massachusetts Bay Colony, for repeatedly defying a Puritan law banning Quakers from the colony. She is one of the four executed Quakers known as the Boston martyrs.
Josiah Winslow was the 13th Governor of Plymouth Colony. In records of the time, historians also name him Josias Winslow, and modern writers have carried that name forward. He was born one year after the Charter which founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony, bringing over 20,000 English immigrants to New England in the 1630s. Josiah was the Harvard College-educated son of Mayflower passenger and Pilgrim leader and Governor Edward Winslow and was Governor from 1673 to 1680. The most significant event during his term in office was King Philip's War, which created great havoc for both the English and Indian populations and changed New England forever. Josiah was the first governor born in a "New England" colony.
The Order of Prince Edward Island is a civilian honour for merit in the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island. Instituted in 1996 by Lieutenant Governor Gilbert Clements, on the advice of the Cabinet under Premier Catherine Callbeck, the order is administered by the Governor-in-Council and is intended to honour current or former Prince Edward Island residents for conspicuous achievements in any field, being thus described as the highest honour amongst all others conferred by the Prince Edward Island Crown.
William Coddington was an early magistrate of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and later of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. He served as the judge of Portsmouth and Newport in that colony, governor of Portsmouth and Newport, deputy governor of the four-town colony, and then governor of the entire colony. Coddington was born and raised in Lincolnshire, England. He accompanied the Winthrop Fleet on its voyage to New England in 1630, becoming an early leader in Boston. There he built the first brick house and became heavily involved in the local government as an assistant magistrate, treasurer, and deputy.
William Hutchinson (1586–1641) was a judge at Portsmouth in the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. He sailed from England to New England in 1634 with his large family. He became a merchant in Boston and served as both Deputy to the General Court and selectman. His wife was Anne Hutchinson who became embroiled in a theological controversy with the Puritan leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony which resulted in her banishment in 1638. The Hutchinsons and 18 others departed to form the new settlement of Pocasset on the Narragansett Bay, which was renamed Portsmouth and became one of the original towns in the Rhode Island colony.
Frank Spottiswoode Aitken was a Scottish-American actor of the silent era. He played Dr. Cameron in D. W. Griffith's epic drama The Birth of a Nation.
Edward Marshall Kimball was an American male actor of the silent era. He appeared in more than 60 films between 1912 and 1936. Like many older actors of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, he enjoyed a varied stage career on and off Broadway before entering the silent films.
Robert Donald Walker was an American film actor. He appeared in more than 200 films between 1913 and 1953. He was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and died in Los Angeles.
Shirley Mason was an American actress of the silent era.
Gorham Academy was a preparatory school for boys and girls in Gorham, Maine.
Edward Hutchinson (1613–1675) was the oldest child of Massachusetts and Rhode Island magistrate William Hutchinson and his wife, the dissident minister Anne Hutchinson. He is noted for making peace with the authorities following his mother's banishment from the Massachusetts Bay Colony during the Antinomian Controversy, returning to Boston, and ultimately dying in the service of the colony that had treated his family so harshly.
Frank Atlee Mason was an American college football coach and an attorney. He was the first full-time football coach at Harvard University.
The Antinomian Controversy, also known as the Free Grace Controversy, was a religious and political conflict in the Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1636 to 1638. It pitted most of the colony's ministers and magistrates against some adherents of Puritan minister John Cotton. The most notable Free Grace advocates, often called "Antinomians", were Anne Hutchinson, her brother-in-law Reverend John Wheelwright, and Massachusetts Bay Governor Henry Vane. The controversy was a theological debate concerning the "covenant of grace" and "covenant of works".
John Wilson was a Puritan clergyman in Boston in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the minister of the First Church of Boston from its beginnings in Charlestown in 1630 until his death in 1667. He is most noted for being a minister at odds with Anne Hutchinson during the Antinomian Controversy from 1636 to 1638, and for being an attending minister during the execution of Mary Dyer in 1660.
Mary and John was a 400-ton ship that is known to have sailed between England and the American colonies four times from 1607 to 1634. Named in tribute to John and Mary Winthrop she was captained by Robert Davies and owned by Roger Ludlow (1590–1664), one of the assistants of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The ship's first two voyages to North America were to what is now Maine in June 1607 and September 1608, transporting emigrants to the colonies and back to England. In 1609, Samuel Argall also used the ship to navigate a shorter route to the Colony of Virginia via Bermuda. The third voyage to Maine was on March 20, 1630, bearing 130 colonists, and the fourth on March 26, 1634, to Nantaskut in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Reuben Atwater Chapman was an American attorney who served as chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court from 1868 until his death in 1873. As a youth he was employed as a store clerk in Blandford, Massachusetts when he was given the opportunity at the age of 19 to read law as a clerk in a law office. Admitted to the bar, he successively practiced in Westfield, Monson, and Ware, before settling in Springfield, Mass., where he practiced in partnership with Whig politician George Ashmun as Chapman & Ashmun. The firm became one of the most successful in the state and in 1860 Chapman was appointed an associate justice of the state supreme court, subsequently being elevated to chief justice in 1868. He was a presidential elector for Lincoln in 1860, and served on the Harvard Board of Overseers. He handled some legal matters for John Brown when Brown was in business in Springfield, and later, when Brown was imprisoned in Virginia facing hanging after the abortive Harper's Ferry raid, he wrote to Chapman asking him to either come himself or send legal assistance: "I have money in hand here to the amount of $250 [...] do not send an ultra abolitionist," which Chapman was unable to do at the time. Chapman died in Switzerland in 1873.
The 59th Massachusetts General Court, consisting of the Massachusetts Senate and the Massachusetts House of Representatives, met in 1838 during the governorship of Edward Everett. Myron Lawrence served as president of the Senate and Robert Charles Winthrop served as speaker of the House.