Robert Harron Movies
Teenaged New Yorker Robert Harron escaped the bleak poverty of his Irish-immigrant neighborhood by taking a messenger job at the American Biograph film studios in the Bronx. When director D. W. Griffith arrived at Biograph in 1908, he took a liking to Harron and decided to take advantage of the boy's photogenic qualities. Before he was 20 years old, Harron was one of the busiest and most popular players at Biograph, acting opposite such "youngsters" as the Gish Sisters and Mary Pickford and playing an exhausting variety of characters, from country bumpkins to hollow-eyed drug addicts. He played one large role and several smaller ones in Griffith's groundbreaking Birth of a Nation (1915), and was prominently featured as the young man unjustly sentenced to hang in the director's follow-up epic Intolerance (1916). He remained with Griffith in 1920, then broke off to form his own production company. Unfortunately, Harron never realized his goal. In September of 1920, Harron died when he was fatally wounded by a gunshot to the left lung in what was officially ruled an accident. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide- 1914
Conservative Biograph Studios, having galloped to prominence on the coattails of their star director D.W. Griffith, refused to allow Griffith to make any film longer than two reels. Ignoring this edict, Griffith permitted his Biblical epic Judith of Bethulia to stretch to four reels; Biograph's reprimands were so blistering that the director quit the studio, setting up his own independent operation. While of great historical value, Judith of Bethulia is, truth to tell, not one of Griffith's best efforts. Among other things, the film is hampered by uninteresting exterior locations and a storyline that switched dramatic gears far too often. The basic story of young widow Judith (Blanche Sweet) offering herself to Assyrian leader Holofernes (Henry B. Walthall) in order to kill the man and thus avenge the subjugation and slaughter of her countrymen was strong enough on its own to carry the day. It was hardly necessary for Griffith to concoct a last-minute-rescue subplot involving Bethulian warrior Robert Harron and damsel in distress Mae Marsh. Historians have suggested that Griffith, impressed by the recently released Italian spectacular Quo Vadis, may have conceived Judith as an American "answer" to that film--an ill-advised decision, since the plotlines of the two properties bear precious little resemblance to each other. Still, it is fascinating to watch Griffith experiment with many of the story elements and techniques that he'd later hone to perfection in such films as Birth of a Nation (1915), Intolerance (1916) and Orphans of the Storm (1916); it's also an enjoyable film-buff exercise to spot such Griffith regulars as Lillian and Dorothy Gish and Harry Carey in minor roles. Biograph--whose fortunes diminished after Griffith's departure--reissued Judith of Bethulia in 1917 in an expanded version titled Her Condoned Sin, using outtakes that Griffith had wisely jettisoned back in 1914. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Blanche Sweet, Henry B. Walthall, (more)
- 1914
Paul Armstrong's venerable stage melodrama The Escape was first brought to the screen by D.W. Griffith in 1914. In true "blood will tell" fashion, the unfortunate children of a criminal family are doomed to live outside the law themselves. Petty crook Jim Joyce (Fred A. Turner) is the father of three: Mae (Blanche Sweet), Jenny (Mae Marsh), and Larry (Robert Harron). While Mae falls in love with a handsome and upright medical intern named Von Elden (Owen Moore), Jenny enters into a less-savory relationship with gangster Bull McGee (Donald Crisp). Meanwhile, brother Larry, seething with resentment over his father's brutality, skulks around like an accident waiting to happen. Things come to a dramatic head when Bull McGee, in a drunken delirium, sells Jenny into white slavery and crushes his own baby to death. Bull inevitably meets his comeuppance at the hands of Larry, while Mae and Von Elden are able to escape all the sordidness and enjoy a wholly unexpected happy ending. The Escape was remade as a "prohibition" drama in 1928. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Donald Crisp, Robert Harron, (more)
- 1913
A besieged blockhouse containing a frightened Lillian Gish, marauding Indians, and a Mexican who heroically brings the cavalry to the rescue, are the none-too-original components of D.W. Griffith's endurable 2-reeler The Battle at Elderbush Gulch, made during the director's final year with Biograph. Griffith called the film his finest up to that time, and he might very well have been correct. It was, one could say, all in the editing, which here builds to a crescendo of excitement as Gish is rescued in the nick of time. Timeworn, yes, but the master knew what he was doing and demanded longer pictures in which to do it. The old-fashioned Biograph refused, and Griffith walked, taking with him the stars of "Elderbush Gulch": Mae Marsh, Gish and Robert Harron. They all reunited the following year for the director's masterpiece, the 12-reel The Birth of a Nation. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
