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An American Citizen
Also known as [The American Citizen]
(1914) United States of America
B&W : Four reels
Directed by J. Searle Dawley
Cast: John Barrymore [Berresford Cruger], Evelyn Moore [Beatrice Carewe], Peter Lang [Peter Barbury], Hal Clarendon [Egerton Brown], Mrs. M.S. Smith [Carola Chapin], Ethel West [Georgia Chapin], Howard Missimer [Sir Humphrey Bunn], Edith Henkle [Lady Bunn], Alexander Gaden [Otto Storbie], Wellington A. Playter [the English valet], Joe Short [the office boy], Ernest Truex [Mercury], [?] Mary Johnson?
Famous Players Film Company production; distributed on State Rights basis by [?] Famous Players Film Company? / Scenario by [?] J. Searle Dawley?, from the play An American Citizen by Madeleine Lucette Ryley. / Released 10 January 1914. / Standard 35mm spherical 1.33:1 format. / Barrymore’s film debut.
Comedy-Drama.
Synopsis: [?] [From The Moving Picture World]? Berresford Cruger, junior partner of the New York brokerage firm of Barbury, Brown and Cruger, is left a fortune of 60,000 pounds, by an English uncle, Carew, on the condition that he renounce his American citizenship, become a British subject, and marry an Englishwoman, the money otherwise being assigned to the Archaeological Society of England. Cruger patriotically refuses the fortune on these conditions, when his pretty English cousin, Beatrice Carew, who has been disinherited in favor of Cruger, because of a past romance with an American, suggests to him that they marry, and so keep the money in the family. Cruger’s American chivalry, and a strong interest in his attractive cousin are aroused. At this critical moment the disappearance of Brown, with $80,000 which he had had in trust for a Miss Georgia Chapin, is discovered. Cruger and Barbury feel responsible for their partner’s defalcation, which adds another incentive to Cruger’s consent to a hasty marriage with Beatrice, who immediately returns to England, after both have agreed to leave each other absolutely free. With his newly acquired money Cruger secretly replaces the missing funds, and invests in the Opera House block of a Wyoming “boom” town, proceeding to forget all about it. Later, he and Barbury go to Nice, where Cruger again meets his cousin-wife. Here they fall seriously in love with each other, and many complications, pathetic and comic, ensue. The situation is further confused by the sudden reappearance of Brown, who, it transpires, is the missing ex-fiancé of Beatrice, believed by her to have been accidentally killed. Beatrice is now fully recovered from her love affair with Brown, but his former affection for her is revived when he learns that her fortune, after all, has not been lost. Brown’s utter lack of character and manliness is evidenced by his efforts to part Cruger and Beatrice. Cruger realizes that Brown’s design is to secure Beatrice’s fortune by marrying her himself, and, in a dramatic scene, tells Brown that he had induced himself to marry Beatrice in order to restore Miss Chapin’s stolen funds, and that he would consent to a divorce from Beatrice, if Brown would agree to return her portion of the estate in the event that be married her. Brown’s ardor cools at this proposal, and he verifies Cruger’s scant opinion of him by again disappearing. Beatrice misunderstands Cruger’s motive, and condemns him as mercenary. Cruger can offer no defense and secretly bears the pang of Beatrice’s innocent misjudgment. Beatrice leaves Cruger in anger and resentment. With a comic irony, the Archaeological Society at this juncture, which has sued to recover the money on the grounds that Cruger was not to share the behest with Beatrice, Carew’s disinherited daughter, wins the action, and Cruger and Beatrice are forced to surrender their fortune and are left without funds or resources. With noble devotion, Cruger stints himself to send Beatrice money without her knowledge of the sacrifice, and is himself on the verge of starvation, when joyful word arrives that his Wyoming Opera House lot has really “boomed,” and made him $50,000. Meanwhile, Georgia Chapin has learned of his unselfish replacement of her stolen funds, and his sacrifices for Beatrice, with which she loses no time in acquainting her. Awakened to a new realization of Cruger’s real worth. Beatrice hastens to him to ask forgiveness, and is received with open arms by her hero, who has managed, through all his difficulties, to regain his American citizenship without losing wife or fortune. // [Variety, 9 January 1914, page 12] With two partners, [Berresford Cruger] is reduced to beef-and-beans banquets in his office when a chance customer turns over to the firm $10,000 for investment. From overnight elation, two of the firm’s trio are thrown in a panic next morning when they discover upon opening their safe . . . a money-less drawer and a note from the third partner, now missing, wishing his former associates a cheery good morning and a long farewell. The frolics of the play are started swiftly on their way with this beginning. The remaining two partners face arrest for embezzlement in addition to their beef-and-bean soirees. Then comes an offer of relief in the bequest of a fabulous fortune to young Cruger — the Barrymore role — if he’ll consent to ’ome to his ancestors’ British marble ’alls, bid good-bye forever to the Hamerican flag, and marry an English gell for his wife . . . . Young Cruger answers it by hanging his office picture of George Washington a few feet closer to his desk . . . . The partners are wondering whether they won’t have to sleep in their office that night for want of better accommodations when enter a wildcat promoter of a western boomtown with a needle project for making ’em millions with a postage stamp investment. To get rid of the dream, young Cruger tags him with his last 2-spot, absently receives a receipt, and, in response to his partner’s hurried summons, hotfoots into the firm’s front office to meet a visitor — the conventional young English cousin. She’s been reduced to coarse rations, too, by the same will that suspends the patrimony of the destitute hero. Abetted by the partner, the young people thereupon conspire to win the bequest by fulfilling the condition of marrying and living abroad. But the girl exacts a promise that the ceremony shall be merely a form: they must part immediately afterward. The marriage takes place, and then come delicious moments in the romance that with Barrymore’s whimsical playing make the remaining acts move all too quickly. Mix-up follows mix-up and laugh, laugh. They both accidentally turn up at the same hotel in Nice; they move, and each again moves to the same hotel, and this time by reason of the same name on hotel register find themselves in the same room. It’s all done very properly, but with delightful coquetries. But there’s a flaw in the manner of their capture of their fortune, and the art society puts both on the plane of common people again by winning the money from the couple in a court fight. Then comes Xmas night for young Cruger in humble London lodgings, where he runs a small bookshop. He finds some faded flowers his wife-in-name-only had given him, also a stocking of hers he had secretly souvenired from their bridal chamber misadventure. It’s Xmas eve and, following a bent of his own whimsical nature, he hangs up the stocking. Then his wife — Miss Moore’s role — finds him and her stocking. Then comes tiding that the despised boomtown investment has made young Cruger a small fortune. // Additional synopsis available in AFI-F1 n. F1.0097.
Survival status: (unknown)
Current rights holder: Public domain [USA].
Keywords: Bankruptcy - Crime: Embezzlement - USA: Wyoming
Listing updated: 10 September 2023.
References: AFI-F1 n. F1.0097; Robinson-Palace p. 144; Slide-Aspects p. 45; Tarbox-Lost p. 205 : Website-IMDb.
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