Silent Feature: What’s His Name
Credits
Studio: Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company
Released: October 22, 1914
Featured Cast: Max Figman, Lolita Robertson, Fred Montague
Producer: Jesse L. Lasky
Director: Cecil B. DeMille
Screenwriter: Cecil B. DeMille
Source: the George Barr McCutcheon novel
Art director: Wilfred Buckland
Cinematographer: Alvin Wyckoff
Theme
After a banker’s daughter marries a soda jerk, she becomes a Broadway star and neglects him.
Production Quotes
“The scope of the photoplay is so much wider than that of the legitimate drama: we DO things instead of acting them. When a big effect is necessary, such as the burning of a ship, the blowing up of a mine, the wrecking of a train, we do not have to trick the effect with lights and scenery. We DO it.”
– Letter, Cecil B. DeMille to Samuel Goldfish, courtesy Robert S. Birchard
Reviews
“The scenes in a theatre, of which there are many, are presented with much convincing detail to show the bloomer-clad chorus girls being drilled into unity of action. A Los Angeles theatre was used in obtaining realistic effects that would have been difficult to duplicate in a motion picture studio.”
– The New York Dramatic Mirror, October 28, 1914
Figures
What’s His Name cost $12,233.97 and grossed $61,560.19.
(These figures have not been adjusted for inflation nor do they include the considerable profits realized from reissues, television syndication, and home entertainment formats.)