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Anna Q. Nilsson.
Photograph: Silent Era image collection.
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The Grit of
the Girl Telegrapher
Also known as The Girl Telegrapher’s Nerve in the USA
(1912) United States of America
B&W : One reel
Directed by J.P. McGowan
Cast: Anna Q. Nilsson [Betty, the girl telegrapher], Guy Coombs [Larry Rowe, the railroad detective], Hal Clements [Smoke Up Smith, the crook], Henry Hallam [Biggs, the detective chief], Miriam Cooper [the boarding house servant girl], J.P. McGowan
Kalem Company, Incorporated, production; distributed by The General Film Company, Incorporated. / Released 21 September 1912. / Standard 35mm spherical 1.33:1 format. / The film was rereleased in the USA as The Girl Telegrapher’s Nerve by The General Film Company, Incorporated, in 1914.
Drama.
Reviews: [The Moving Picture World, 5 October 1912, page ?] A picture made good and interesting by the materials it uses rather than by the way they are handled. It is a railroad, melodramatic picture, but the plot, the form it takes, is haphazard. It features the grit of a girl telegrapher, which, as shown, is equal to that of the usual Western sheriff, and it also features a chase in locomotives of a bad man by the girl. The bad man had not done anything to hurt the girl; she landed on him chiefly because her lover, a detective, had been ordered to keep an eye out for him. We are interested in the heroine solely because of her unusual grit, which isn’t likely to make many spectators fall in love with her. After all, the best kind of heroine for wide popularity is Larrie Doone, a womanly, lovable girl. Another remark we may safely make, apropos of this picture, is that the well-made melodrama, even when it uses much that is trite with freshness in its characters and sets, is more likely to please than a picture like this in which we find much freshness and good acting, but do not find the old formulas that have been proved effective.
Survival status: Print exists.
Current rights holder: Public domain [USA].
Listing updated: 4 December 2022.
References: Website-IMDb.
Home video: DVD.
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