John H. Collins Movies
- 1919
Viola Dana uses all her comic talent in this Metro feature. She plays Annice Paish, a husband-hunting maiden in a small town where the pickings aren't just slim, they're nonexistent. After performing bridesmaid duties at the wedding of the last eligible man in Plainville, she tells her friend Edna Lawson (Elsie MacLeod) that she's got s plan. Annice's plan is to throw a bunch of tacks on the roadway in front of her house and wait for someone (preferably young, male and single) to get a flat tire. And it does happen, too well -- the accident that brings Vance Duncan (John McGowan) into her life leaves him with a broken arm and leg. With the help of Cord (Fred Jones), a detective who's been trailing Vance, the guilty Annice carries the injured man into her house. Luckily her father (Howard Hall) is the town doctor, so Vance is well taken care of. The detective tells Annice that Vance is an alcoholic and his Uncle Mike wants him committed to a sanitarium. This Annice refuses to believe. Uncle Mike (Franklyn Hanna) arrives on the scene and he turns out to be a rather young, handsome guy himself. But before anything more can transpire, Cord kidnaps Vance and takes him off to Dr. Dumbbell's Sanitarium for Drunkards. To get Vance out of this fix, Annice dresses up like a man and plays a hungover drunk so she too can get committed to the sanitarium. Once the two escape and return to Annice's home, another Uncle Mike appears and it turns out that Cord has been tailing the wrong man the whole time. Annice marries the first Uncle Mike while Edna marries Vance. This film was based on Oh Annice, a story by Alexine Heyland which appeared in the Woman's Home Companion. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
- 1918
Another of a successful string of Metro features directed by the vastly underrated John H. Collins, Riders of the Night was set in Kentucky hill country. Collins' wifeViola Dana stars as Sally Castleton, a country girl in love with a brooding and idealistic aristocrat. When her sweetheart joins a night-riding vigilante organization, Sally is temporarily dismayed but resolves to hide the man from the authorities. Ultimately she gives up her own life for the sake of her lover. Though clearly inspired by Birth of a Nation, the film never resorted to mere imitation and was capable of standing up on its own dramatic and aesthetic merits. Unfortunately, like most of the Collins/Dana collaborations, Riders of the Night has apparently long since disappeared. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1918
Directed by the unjustly forgotten John H. Collins, Opportunity starred Collins' wife Viola Dana as Mary Willard, a physical culturalist and diehard sports fan. Denied permission to attend a boxing match, Mary borrows her brother's clothes and goes to the bout disguised as a boy. Seated next to her is Anthony Fry (Hale Hamilton), who fancies himself a "master of human destiny." To prove his theory that any man can be transformed into an overnight success, Fry "adopts" the male-garbed Mary and proceeds to drill her in the noble art of getting ahead in business. Meanwhile, Mary's wealthy father assumes that his daughter has been kidnapped and alerts the cops. Things aren't straightened out until Mary herself (or is it "himself"?) takes control of the situation. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Viola Dana, Hale Hamilton, (more)
- 1917
Viola Dana, Metro Studios' favorite leading lady, stars in A Girl Without a Soul. Dana essays a dual role as twin sisters who not unexpectedly are as different as night and day. Priscilla, an aspiring artist, is ruined by scurrilous Russian musician Ivor (Fred Jones). Meanwhile, Priscilla's sister Unity settles down for a wholesome small-town existence with village smithy Hiram Miller (Robert Walker). Ultimately, Unity's husband is blamed for a crime committed by the craven Priscilla. Girl Without a Soul was directed by Viola Dana's talented husband John H. Collins, whose promising career was tragically cut short by the Influenza epidemic of 1918. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1917
A naive Irish girl Jerry McNairn (Mabel Taliaferro) travels to the States and stays with Norton Burbeck (Robert Walker). Burbeck is to inherit a fortune, providing he is married by a certain date. He intends to wed Beatrice Gauden (Sally Crute), not realizing that she is already married and just leading him on. Her husband (Fred Jones) is in league with Burbeck's cousin, Curtiss, who will get the inheritance if Burbeck does not marry. This scheme almost works, but Burbeck quickly turns around and marries Jerry to save the fortune. Jerry knows something of the scheme but believes that maybe Beatrice does love Burbeck. To find out, she consents to the divorce that was promised her when she married Burbeck, but says she intends to keep the money, which, according to the will's instructions, she can do. Beatrice, of course, immediately leaves Burbeck. He by now has discovered he really loves Jerry, but she has just left him, and his money, to go back to Ireland. He catches up with her just before she sails, and they leave together. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
- 1917
The popular star/director combination of Viola Dana and John H. Collins had another winner on their hands with Aladdin's Other Lamp. Dana plays a young Arabian Nights slave girl in search of her mother. Mom and daughter are reunited through the facilities of a magic lamp, allowing the talented Collins free reign in the special-effects department. Since Dana's character name was Patsy rather than Fatima or Yasmin, one suspects that Aladdin's Other Lamp was intended to be an extended dream sequence. Director John H. Collins' career, and his happy marriage to Viola Dana, flourished until he tragically fell victim to the 1919 influenza epidemic. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1917
Lakshima (Viola Dana) is in love with Krishna Dhwaj (William B. Davidson), but her father (Augustus Phillips, the Maharajah of Bhartari, has other plans for her. Krishna is sent to college in America, while Lakshima is supposed to be married off to a wealthy old man. But she refuses to have anything to do with him and throws herself into a lake. Bostonian George Morling (Robert Walker), who is in India on business, happens by and saves her from drowning. After that, Lakshima considers herself Morling's slave, even though Morling neither wants nor needs one. He sneaks off on a ship, only to find out the next morning that Lakshima has stowed away and is still glued to him. Once he's back in Boston, he tries to hide her, but she appears just when he's having dinner with his fiancee. Finally Lakshima's father angrily arrives, and he is ready to have Morling killed when Lakshima shows up with her lover Krishna -- the pair have just gotten married. This kind of amusing lunacy was typical of Viola Dana's comedies. Director John H. Collins, also Dana's husband, died in the influenza epidemic later in the decade. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
- 1917
George Anderson (Robert Walker) is a clerk in a publishing house by day and an unpublished novelist by night. His book, called "The Mortal Sin," concerns a man whose wife sacrifices her honor to pay for his recovery from tuberculosis. In Anderson's story, the husband finds out what the wife has done and forgives her. But when the writer undergoes a similar situation in his own life, things turn out quite differently. When Anderson suffers a nervous collapse, his wife Jane (Viola Dana) goes to work for Emmet Standish, the publisher (Augustus Phillips). Standish lusts after Jane, and she only accepts his advances so that her husband can continue to recuperate out West. When Anderson returns home, he finds his wife at his boss's house and in a fury denounces, then strangles her. Anderson is on his way to the electric chair for his crime, when he is awakened -- in a desperated stretch for a happy ending, it turns out to be just a dream. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
- 1917
It might be hard to imagine Viola Dana as a half-white, half-Indian girl, but that's how she was cast in this picture, based on the novel A Wife by Purchase by Paul Trent. Dana plays Ameia, who (in a display of typical Hollywood ignorance regarding other cultures) is about to be sacrificed to Krishna. She seeks refuge with Dr. Claude Drummond (Robert Walker). He marries her to save her and then finds out that his brother is dead, and he has inherited his title. When he returns to England, Jack Alston (Augustus Phillips) follows with Ameia. Drummond finds out that a marriage has been arranged for him with Olive Dennison (Marie Adell). Ameia, to free up her husband, takes poison, but before it kills her, it is discovered that Olive is in love with Alston, while Drummond loved Ameia all along. Ameia is saved and returns to India with her husband. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
- 1917
For years, it was a "given" that no director of merit ever emerged from the old Edison studios. This assertion was disproved when several of the films directed by Edison alumnus John H. Collins were rediscovered in the late 1970s. One of the best of Collins' efforts (and, sadly, one of his last) was the six-reel Metro drama Blue Jeans. Based on an old stage play, the film was set in Hill Country, where a long-standing family feud causes trouble for feisty heroine June (played by Collins' talented wife Viola Dana. The climax is that old "meller-drammer" standy, the Hero Strapped to a Log in the Sawmill. Despite the silliness of the situation, Collins plays it dead straight, and the scene is almost unbearably suspenseful (incidentally, the heroine comes to the rescue, thereby reversing the usual cliché). Blue Jeans was exceptionally well cast, with several familiar faces (including John Ford stock-company perennial Russell Simpson) performing above and beyond the call of duty. Alas, John H. Collins would soon fall victim to the influenza epidemic of 1918, robbing the screen of one of its most potent pioneering talents. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1916
Although the "star system" was discouraged at Edison studios, actress Viola Dana managed to rise to fame under the Edison banner -- thanks in no small part to her favorite director (and her husband!) John H. Collins. In The Innocence of Ruth, Dana plays the title character, who upon the death of her father is placed under the guardianship of bachelor and man-about-town Mr. Carter (Edward Earle). For the next five reels, Carter dedicates himself to the attempted deflowering of the wide-eyed Ruth. By and by, however, her sweet ingenuousness deflects him from his mission -- so much so that he rescues her from being seduced by another libidinous bachelor. Just like her spiritual sister Doris Day, Ruth uses her virginity as a weapon with which to conquer the man of her dreams. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1916
June Mullens, otherwise known as Tangletop (Viola Dana) is the ostracized daughter of Henry, the town drunk (George Melville). She is used by Emmet Dwight (Jack Busby) to break up a romance between Lowell Van Orden (Edward Earle) and Mollie Dean (Lorraine Frost). Dwight is Van Orden's guardian, and he wants his daughter, Madeline (Mona Kingsley) to marry the wealthy young man. Van Orden was blind but his eyesight has been restored by an operation, and Dwight pays the ragamuffin June to pretend she's Mollie. This squelches the relationship. June's father dies, and a new minister, Reverend Clyde Harmon (Robert Walker), takes her in. He teaches her about the ten commandments, and she goes about righting the wrong she feels she did to Mollie and Van Orden. The couple are reunited and the minister and the newly-educated June wind up together. Viola Dana and director John H. Collins were husband and wife. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
- 1916
A pair of Shaker sweethearts, William Bard (Robert Walker) and Evelyn (Viola Dana), ignore the edicts of their religion and their elders. As a result, Evelyn has a child out of wedlock. William is flogged, and when Evelyn dies, he swears revenge. Cast out of the village, he goes on to great wealth and plots to cast the Shakers off their land. He believes that his daughter, Eve, died but she hasn't. In fact she has grown up to be an attractive young woman (also played by Dana) and his adopted son, Rodney Drab (Edward Earle), falls in love with her. When William finds out Eve's identity, his desire for revenge abates, and even Eve's straight-laced grandfather, Joseph (August Phillips), has a change of heart. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
- 1915
Of the many films inspired by the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911, Edison's Children of Eve was inarguably the best. Realistically (and very grimly) directed by the unjustly forgotten John H. Collins, the film stars Collins' actress wife Viola Dana as the spunky daughter of a New York sweatshop owner. She remains fully aware of the dangers facing the young female workers -- the shop has no fire escape and only one stairway. Thus, she obtains a job at the shop under an assumed name, intending to collect evidence for the Labor Commission. Alas, a fire breaks out just as management has blocked off the stairway to make sure that the girls won't try to sneak off the job. Dana courageously helps her co-workers escape, only to be trapped in the conflagration herself. It is the heroine's death (a still-startling moment) that awakens her father, and other fat-cat businessmen like him, of the importance of treating workers like human beings rather than caged animals. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1915
This drama uses a dramatic narrative technique that was fairly novel at the time -- during the courtroom scene, as each character tells his or her tale, the scene fades into the action of their story. Something similar was used in the New York stage play, On Trial, and the jurymen in this picture was culled from the On Trial cast. Irene Bromley (Gertrude McCoy) has been left an annual allowance by her father, to be managed by trustee Sidney Villon (Bigelow Cooper). Both Villon and Arthur Colby (Richard Tucker) want to marry Irene; however, Villon's more interested in her money while Colby's love is genuine. On the night that Irene turns down Colby's proposal, Villon's proposal is also refused and he threatens to send her into poverty. Colby overhears the lawyer's threat and tells Irene that he knows. He leaves her shortly after midnight to head to Villon's. The next morning, Villon is found dead from a bullet wound and Colby lays nearby, unconscious. He is tried for Villon's murder, and the case seems cut and dried. Villon's pocket watch, however, was shattered by a bullet and it stopped at the stroke of twelve. It turns out that Villon had another enemy -- Rupert Hazard, an inventor he swindled (Duncan McRae). Irene and her lawyer meet with him and he admits his guilt before blowing himself up with one of his own inventions. Irene testifies in court that Colby was with her at midnight, not at Villon's and once he is acquitted she agrees to marry him. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
- 1915
Once again, Viola Dana was put through her screen paces by her husband, director John H. Collins, in Edison's Gladiola. Deeply in love with a wealthy city dweller, country girl Dana follows him to the Big Apple and agrees to become his mistress. But when his wife returns, the now-pregnant heroine is cast out of the house. Returning to her home village, Dana is branded a harlot and adulterer by the oh-so-pious townsfolk. Later on, her city lover, now widowed, shows up to ask Dana's hand in marriage. By now, however, she is impervious to his honeyed words and sends him on his way, preferring instead to become the wife of her childhood sweetheart, who has stood by her all along despite the scornful words of the rest of the community. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1914
This episodic three-reel drama was capably directed by the talented but nearly-forgotten John H. Collins. Although she has grown up in affluent circumstances, the death of her father brings Sylvia Fairfax (Gertrude McCoy) to the brink of poverty. Forced to earn a living, she goes to work as a governess for a Northern friend of her father's. But her inexperience shows and she is discharged. Then she gets a job in a department store and is befriended by one of her co-workers, Hetty Sharp. Hetty saves Sylvia from the attentions of Banners, who has tried the timeworn line about getting her into show business. Hetty, however, has been stealing from the company and Sylvia winds up being accused. In spite of this, she refuses to reveal Hetty as the guilty party, no matter what the police do to her. Finally Hetty's conscience can no longer stand it and she confesses. The police are impressed by Sylvia's fortitude and offer her a job as a detective. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
