Broken Blossoms: Lillian Gish and Richard Barthelmess star in D.W. Griffith’s 1919 melodrama about doomed interethnic love and dysfunctional family relationships – one of the best movies of the 1910s
BEST FILM
Broken Blossoms
The Hoodlum
Little Pal
Old Wives for New
A Romance of the Redwoods
BEST DIRECTOR
Reginald Barker
The Italian
Reginald Barker
The Wrath of the Gods
Christy Cabanne
Sold for Marriage
Cecil B. DeMille
Carmen
Cecil B. DeMille
Old Wives for New
Cecil B. DeMille
A Romance of the Redwoods
Sidney Franklin
The Hoodlum
D.W. Griffith
Broken Blossoms
James Kirkwood
Little Pal
Raymond Longford
The Sentimental Bloke
Giovanni Pastrone
Cabiria
Mauritz Stiller
Love and Journalism / Kärlek och journalistik
George Loane Tucker
Traffic in Souls
Irvin Willat
The False Faces
At the time of its release, the scandalous Traffic in Souls, one of the first feature films made in the United States, became a huge moneymaker.
This moralistic/sensationalistic melodrama about the white slave trade – immigrant women are forced into prostitution in New York City – remains watchable chiefly because of director George Loane Tucker’s sure touch. Tucker became a major name in the 1910s – The Miracle Man (1919), starring Thomas Meighan, Betty Compson, and Lon Chaney was another major hit – but he had his career cut short by illness. He died in 1921 at the age of 49. Unfortunately, most of his films are now lost. (Just as unfortunately, only fragments remain from The Miracle Man.)
Traffic in Souls stars Ethel Grandin and Matt Moore, both of whom were quite popular in the 1910s. The film was released by Carl Laemmle’s Universal Film Mfg. Co., which is – more or less – the same Universal that released Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Green Zone not that long ago.
Traffic in Souls (1913)
Director: George Loane Tucker
Screenplay: Walter MacNamara
Cast: Ethel Grandin, Matt Moore, Jane Gail, William H. Turner.
BEST ACTOR
Richard Barthelmess
Broken Blossoms
George Beban
The Italian
Elliott Dexter
Old Wives for New
Elliott Dexter
A Romance of the Redwoods
Douglas Fairbanks
Reaching for the Moon
Richard Lund
Love and Journalism
Tully Marshall
The Devil’s Needle
Thomas Meighan
Male and Female
Arthur Tauchert
The Sentimental Bloke
BEST ACTRESS
Geraldine Farrar
Carmen
Pauline Frederick
The Love That Lives
Lillian Gish
Broken Blossoms
Lillian Gish
Enoch Arden
Lillian Gish
The Greatest Question
Lillian Gish
The Mothering Heart
Lillian Gish
Sold for Marriage
Mary Johnson
Sir Arne’s Treasure / Herr Arnes pengar
Ossi Oswalda
I Don’t Want to Be a Man / Ich möchte kein Mann sein
Mary Pickford
Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley
Mary Pickford
Heart o’ the Hills
Mary Pickford
The Hoodlum
Mary Pickford
Little Pal
Mary Pickford
A Romance of the Redwoods
Mary Pickford
Tess of the Storm Country
Gloria Swanson
Male and Female
Best Supporting Actress
Sylvia Ashton
Old Wives for New
Stina Berg
Love and Journalism
Josephine Crowell
The Greatest Question
Lila Lee
Male and Female
ZaSu Pitts
The Little Princess
Clarine Seymour
The Girl Who Stayed at Home
Norma Talmadge
The Devil’s Needle
Florence Vidor
Old Wives for New
Clara Williams
The Italian
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Frank Bennett
Sold for Marriage
Lon Chaney
Victory
George Fawcett
The Habit of Happiness
Theodore Roberts
Old Wives for New
BEST SCREENPLAY
Harriet Bloch
Love and Journalism
John Emerson and Anita Loos
His Picture in the Papers
D.W. Griffith
Broken Blossoms
Thomas H. Ince and C. Gardner Sullivan
The Italian
Raymond Longford and Lottie Lyell
The Sentimental Bloke
Jeanie Macpherson
Old Wives for New
Jeanie Macpherson
A Romance of the Redwoods
Frances Marion
The Hoodlum
William E. Wing
Sold for Marriage
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
G.W. Bitzer
Broken Blossoms
G.W. Bitzer
The Greatest Question
G.W. Bitzer
Hearts of the World
H. Lyman Broening
Snow White
Victor Fleming and Harry Thorpe
The Man from Painted Post
Eugene Gaudio
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
René Guissart
Victory
George Hill
Polly of the Circus
Charles Rosher
Daddy Long Legs
Charles Rosher
Heart o’ the Hills
Walter Stradling
The Little Princess
Walter Stradling
Stella Maris
Alvin Wyckoff
Joan the Woman
Alvin Wyckoff
Male and Female
Alvin Wyckoff
Old Wives for New
Alvyn Wyckoff
A Romance of the Redwoods
Alvin Wyckoff and Charles Edgar Schoenbaum
The Woman God Forgot
BEST MUSIC
Louis F. Gottschalk
Broken Blossoms
BEST SHORT FILM
The Battle at Elderbush Gulch
director: D.W. Griffith; screenplay: D.W. Griffith and Henry Albert Phillips
By Man’s Law
director: Christy Cabanne; screenplay: William E. Wing
Best Movies of All Time (in the process of being updated)
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Photo of Richard Barthelmess and Lillian Gish in Broken Blossoms, directed by D.W. Griffith: Griffith / United Artists.