World Film was the first motion picture company that tried to tack an ending onto Charles Dickens' unfinished novel. Screenwriter Tom Terriss, who also starred as choirmaster John Jasper, gave it a happy ending which, despite the raves of the trade papers, must have horrified Dickens' fans. According to Dickens, Edwin Drood (Rodney Hicock and Rosa Budd (Vinnie Burns) are engaged to be married, as their parents have desired. But unbeknownst to Drood, his youthful uncle, Jasper, is deeply in love with Rosa — so much so, in fact, that his despair has turned him into a secret opium addict. Neville Landless (Paul Sterling) is also in love with Rosa, and Jasper helps feed his jealousy of Drood. Then one day Drood vanishes. Because of Jasper's assertions, Landless is held and questioned for Drood's murder but no body is found. Meanwhile, Landless' sister Helena (Margaret Prussing) also disappears and not long after a stranger named Datchery shows up and begins asking questions about Drood's disappearance. Suspicion seems to be following Jasper when Dickens' story stops. According to the Terriss version, Drood escapes Jasper's attempt to kill him with the help of Datchery, who is Helena Landless in disguise.

THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD

Five-Reel Drama Based on An Unfinished Story by Charles Dickens.

Released by the World Film Corporation.

• John Jasper — Tom Terriss
• Edwin Drood — Rodney Hicock
• Rosa Bud — Vinnie Burns
• Neville Landless — Paul Sterling
• The Woman Faye — Faye Cusick
• Helena Landless — Margaret Prussian

Tom Terriss has a better right than most people to guess at a solution of ''The Mystery of Edwin Drood," for his knowledge of Dickens is unusually thorough. His continuation of the story from the inconclusive point where it closed, because the novelist did not live to write his own conclusion, is generally satisfactory from the standpoint of photo-play melodrama, which, according to innumerable precedents, permits a hero to cling to life when lesser men would pass away. The Edwin Drood of Mr. Terriss's creation is a very hard man to kill. There is, in truth, a touch of the supernatural about him. The completed chapters of "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" hardly need summarizing — how John Jasper, the opium-smoking organist of Cloisterham Cathedral, harboured an insane passion for Rosa Bud, engaged to Drood, how he starts a quarrel between his nephew and Neville Landless, another young man, in love with Rosa, and how he causes Landless to be accused of murder, when Drood mysteriously disappears. In the pictorial version the mystery is not in the disappearance of Jasper's nephew: hut in his reappearance after being put out of the way with seeming finality. Returning home, a reconciliation with Landless having been effected, we see Drood fall under a blow delivered by Jasper, who has followed him to a lonely spot in the woods. Apparently the unconscious body is shoved into a quiet pond before the uncle goes about his business of connecting Landless with the crime. For some time we see no more of Drool, but the plot of the picture requiring his return. Mr. Terriss asks us to believe that Drood retained the breath of life until picked up by fishermen. Many hours must have elapsed between the evening that Drood was thrown unconscious into the pond, and the day he was rescued, still unconscious, but alive. This is not plausible. Nor is an audience likely to be convinced that Dickens intended his mysterious stranger, Mr. Datchery, to be Helena Landless masquerading in man's clothes. In a good mystery story the deception of the characters must not be so easily penetrated. The chief defects of the picture are a sketchiness in construction that leaves too many improbabilities to be taken for granted, and occasional errors in cutting and assembling the scenes that may be remedied. But all things considered, it is an interesting, and at times an exciting melodrama, in which Mr. Terriss gives a very forceful characterization of John Jasper. Settings are satisfactory, and an able company appears in support of the featured player. — The New York Dramatic Mirror, October 21, 1914

This five-reel picture, made by Blache for the World Film Corporation, will be most heartily welcomed not only by lovers of Dickens, but by every photoplay fan as well. As is well known, Dickens died before he had finished the story and since then minds big and little have been trying to solve the questions left unanswered by the author. Terriss has now added his solution of the problem, and while, in order to bring about the "happy ending" he has adopted the less likely answer as to Drood's death or disappearance, he has added to the Dickens' literature an entirely novel and original reply to the query, "What became of John Jasper?" — an answer that in some ways is the most Dickensesque of all that have preceded it. The story is clear and well told and follows closely in its earlier portions the line of development followed by Dickens, perhaps a little too closely in this last respect as those who have not read the fiction story may have a little difficulty at first in realizing the relationships of the characters. On the other hand, the main mystery theme is so clearly and interestingly dealt with and the acting so nearly perfect that the spectator is held enthralled from beginning to end. There are but two serious faults in the picture, one editorial, the other due to carelessness in production. The modern enameled iron bedstead that stares us in the face in the opium joint had no business to lie there and detracts seriously from the enjoyment of an otherwise magnificently produced scene. Not only has Dickens carefully described the old-fashioned four-post bedstead that was in the joint, but the modern iron bed was unknown at the time in which Dickens laid his story. The other error is in the preparation for the solution of the mystery. The cathedral crypt scenes and the hiding of Drood's body are brought in at the end of the story as an absolute and rather jarring surprise. Dickens devotes several chapters as to how Jasper learned about the tombs and the quicklime and obtained the keys of the crypt and also the relations between Dachery and Durdles. These are important incidents and could easily have been inserted by enlarging the opium dreams of Jasper to include the visit to the crypt with Durdles and the purloining of the keys, and by a couple of scenes emphasizing Durdles' avocation of stonemason and his meeting with Datchery as Dickens has done. This would have immensely strengthened the argument for the solution offered as well as greatly clarified the story. On the whole, however, for accuracy of detail, comprehensiveness of treatment and a delicate and definite interpretation of Dickens the picture will rank, with "Dante's Inferno" and "Quo Vadis" as among the great and remarkable achievements of the moving picture act. — Moving Picture World, October 24, 1914