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Rare Gems on DVD

Our users have spoken, and we have listened. You want to see rare and hard to find films, and we have created for you the Silent Gems Collection, available on eBay. This DVD collection includes rare and for the first time available films with our stars, as well as other silent masterpieces. These are high quality films that are hard to find anywhere else. Please click on this link to see the collection: Silent Gems Collection

Important Update:

You don't have to leave our website in order to obtain the films from our Silent Gems Collection. These gems are now available to our users as a reward for donation. For details click here.

 Out Yonder 1919The Woman God Forgot 1917That Model from Paris 1926For Better for Worse 1919Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall 1924

 

OUR DOCUMENTARY

    We are proud to present to all silent film lovers our multiple award-winning documentary! In March 2015 it won the distinction "Award of Merit" at the San Francisco Film Awards. In May it won the Silver Award at the 2015 International Independent Film Awards. In September 2015 it won the Award of Recognition at the Accolade Global Film Competition. Of equal merit is the inclusion of the documentary in the Official Selection of the San Jose International Short Film Festival in October 2015. In December the documentary won the extremely prestigious Diamond Award at the 2015 California Film Awards. The amazing run of recognition for our documentary continued in 2016. In February it was included in the Official Selection of the Buffalo Niagara International Film Festival.

 San Francisco Film Awards newInternational Independent Film Awards newAccolade Global Film Competition Award newSan Jose International Short Film Festival newCalifornia Film Awards small new

Article Index

FLORENCE AND DANIEL

Florence may have had other reasons for preferring New York. It's not known just when she became engaged to Daniel Carson Goodman, or how long they'd been friends before the engagement. Goodman was credited -- if that's the correct term! -- for the scenario of Zudora, so they may have met in late 1914 when he performed that assignment for Thanhouser. But Goodman was a celebrated figure in certain New York circles well before 1914, and their acquaintance could have preceded the Zudora fiasco.

Born in Chicago on August 24, 1883, Daniel Carson Goodman was a man of many careers. He received his M. D. in 1905 from Washington University of St. Louis, then traveled to Europe for post-graduate work. Returning to St. Louis in 1908 with a diploma earned at Vienna, he practiced medicine and did cell research.

He also wrote novels of a kind that were bound to provoke controversy in early 20th-century America: Dr. Goodman was a literary analyst of what was euphemistically termed the Sex Problem. In 1913, his Hagar Revelly was a cause celebre, titillating readers and infuriating censors. Goodman's fondness for the book -- and its presumably gratifying sales -- can be inferred from the name he gave his New jersey estate, Revelly Farm.

Physician and author Goodman may have made his first significant film contact with D. W. Griffith, whose April 1914 release The Battle Of The Sexes was based on one of his novels (presumably either Hagar Revelly or an earlier work entitled The Unclothed). The Zudora incident apparently didn't damage his reputation too badly because, according to a Moving Picture World item of July 31, 1915, Lubin in Philadelphia acquired his screen-writing services. In return for $60,000, Goodman was to deliver 12 scenarios to Lubin during the next year. It's not clear if this agreement was actually fulfilled, but Goodman may well have been kept busy by the film industry; his next novel didn't appear until 1918.

Goodman continued to publish novels at irregular intervals until the mid-1940s and had several of his plays produced. Graduating from screen-writer to studio executive in the 1920s, Goodman remained no stranger to controversy. When his marriage to troubled actress Alma Rubens ended, her divorce action included the accusation that he had beaten her.

Dr. Goodman was also a central figure in the murky Thomas Ince affair of 1924. Los Angeles and San Diego officials judged that Ince died of natural causes after his removal from William Randolph Hearst's yacht, but rumors of foul play and coverup have yet to subside. As chief executive of Hearst's Cosmopolitan Productions, Goodman was aboard the Oneida for the fatal cruise. As a physician, Goodman was naturally charged with caring for Ince after he was stricken. If anyone could have told the world exactly what did or did not happen to Thomas Ince, it was Daniel Carson Goodman. But he apparently maintained a discreet silence on the matter, at least in public, to his death in 1957.

As Florence La Badie's fiance in 1917, however, Goodman was still just the slightly scandalous author of Hagar Revelly. A photo accompanying the 1915 Lubin announcement suggests an intelligent and forceful man. From what's known of Florence's personality, we can imagine their relationship was an intense one, vibrant with both physical attraction and emotional tensions. We can only speculate whether the attachment between Daniel and Florence would have endured through the years because automotive disaster in the Hudson River village of Croton severed it with violent finality.

The Hudson River and its often spectacular scenery must have been familiar to Florence; the railroad between Montreal and New York ran parallel to its course for over 100 miles. Once Canada entered the Great War, she may have traveled north along the Hudson and the lakes beyond to troop camps outside Montreal where conscripts were trained for the trenches of the Western Front. T. Harry Happeny's 1978 Classic Images article on Florence indeed states that she supported the Canadian war effort by entertaining in these camps, just as Pickford, Chaplin, and Fairbanks enthusiastically sold war bonds after America became entangled in 1917. French Canadian troops were less than enthusiastic about fighting what was seen as a British war and came close to mutiny in the great Valcartier camp on one occasion. The presence of a star whose films and French Canadian heritage were surely well-known in her father's homeland may have taken an edge off the disgruntled soldiers' hostility -- or so the Canadian government probably hoped.

But when Florence rode the train north in August 1917, she traveled only as far as Albany. There she met Daniel Goodman, who'd been vacationing in the Adirondacks while she'd remained in New York, perhaps finishing Man Without A Country, which was to be her last film. They returned south along the Hudson, bound for New York, in his automobile. Was Florence, the daredevil, at the wheel, or had the intermittent burns and bruises of six years full of film-making diminished her taste for excitement? The driver, whether Florence or Daniel, couldn't control the car as it swerved to avoid an overturned brewery truck and a fire engine on a hill in Croton about six o'clock on the evening of Tuesday, August 28. When they were pulled from the wreckage, Daniel was bleeding heavily; a collarbone and a rib had been fractured, and his Achilles tendon severed. Florence was less fortunate. Crushed between the overturned car and the ground, she had suffered a smashed pelvis and damaged internal organs. They were taken to Ossining, site of the nearest hospital, where Daniel remained for over a month until discharged.

Because Florence's injuries evidently precluded her removal to New York, eminent specialists traveled the 30 miles north to Ossining. She received the best medical care available in 1917; indeed, with the help of hastily-performed surgery, she survived the initial trauma. But the extensiveness of her injuries left little room for error, and once blood-poisoning took hold, Florence lost any chance of returning to her home and career and the hope of a life with the man she loved. Even as her screen image was enthralling her public once more in Man Without A Country, Florence La Badie faded out of the life she'd lived so energetically.


From Lilac Lane

 

A special acknowledgement

Let's all give our thanks to Ned Thanhouser for the outstanding work he has done for the past 25+ years in archives around the globe to acquire and publish on DVD and online Thanhouser films starring Florence La Badie. 

You can learn about Ned Thanhouser's new documentary and watch free online full length videos of surviving Thanhouser films featuring other stars here:
www.thanhouser.org


Click to enlarge:

 

Selected Filmography

Florence-La-Badie-in-The-Woman-in-White-1917-20

   Florence La Badie in "The Woman in White" (1917)

 

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