Always in the Way (1915)

Partially filmed on-location in the Bahamas, Always in the Way was the first of six Mary Miles Minter pictures produced by Metro. Minter -- at age 13, already a veteran stage and screen actress -- was at the time seen as a serious threat to Mary Pickford's dominance at the box office. Based on a then-popular song, Always in the Way featured Minter as Dorothy North, a young girl whose missionary foster parents are killed by the Zulus. Shipped off to New York by the mission, Dorothy finds employment in a florist shop and suffers the traditional hardships before accidentally discovering her real father, handsome millionaire Lowell Sherman. Interestingly, Minter's infamously interfering mother, Charlotte Shelby, played her foster mother in this film. Although never really a threat to Pickford's hegemony, Minter nevertheless enjoyed some popularity as a Dresden doll-like ingenue. Her connection with the 1922 murder of director William Desmond Taylor, circumstantial as it probably were, brought a sudden end to her career. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi