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.)