Walter Miller Movies
A major star of silent serials, often in tandem with the fearless Allene Ray, handsome, dark-haired Walter Miller had begun his professional career with various stock companies operating out of Jersey City, NJ. Onscreen with the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company from as early as 1912, Miller appeared in supporting roles in such melodramas as the still extant The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912), in which he played Lillian Gish's young husband, and later specialized in "other man" roles. Stardom came at the Pathé company in the 1920s, where he most fortuitously was teamed with the era's great serial queen Allene Ray in one popular chapterplay after another, ten in all, the team battling their way through such wild and woolly adventures as Sunken Silver (1925), their first, The Green Archer (1925), Hawk of the Hills (1927), and The Black Book (1929). Ray did not fare well in talkies and retired but Miller found a berth with serial newcomer Mascot, who starred him in King of the Kongo (1929), The Lone Defender (1930), and King of the Wild (1930). But he floundered without Miss Ray by his side and since there was always something slightly sinister about his looks, which a deep voice only acerbated, Miller spent the remainder of his career on the wrong side of the law, appearing in countless B-movies, Westerns and crime yarns alike, until his death from a heart attack in 1940. He left a widow, Eileen Schofield, who had played a bit part in her husband's 1930 effort King of the Wild. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi- 1918
Like many another adventure film of the era, With Neatness and Dispatch was based on a Saturday Evening Post story by prolific wordsmith Kenneth Roberts. The story begins at a fancy country estate known as Eden, where Geraldine and Mary Ames (Beverly Bayne, Sylvia Arnold) live a sheltered existence with their eccentric Aunt Letitia (Ricca Allen). A natural-born man hater, Aunt Letitia refuses to allow Geraldine and Mary to have anything to do with romance. Aware that Mary wants to elope with a young engineer, Geraldine takes matters in her own hands, arranging with the local police commissioner (a long-time family friend) to have Aunt Letitia "robbed," tied up, and gagged by a supposed desperado, thereby allowing Mary an opportunity to escape. The man assigned to pull off the deception is the commissioner's son, Paul Donaldson (Francis X. Bushman), who pretends to be a notorious escaped convict named Slim Keegan. Little does anyone realize that Keegan is already ensconced at Eden as the family chauffeur, and that the crook is planning to pull off a genuine robbery with the help of the other servants, all of whom are his underworld cronies. Convinced that Donaldson is Keegan, Geraldine takes a liking to our hero and sets about to "reform" him, unwittingly affording the real Keegan time aplenty to loot the family safe. Donaldson manages to collar the crooks and save the family fortune, but out of love for Geraldine he agrees to keep the troublesome Aunt Letitia firmly trussed up for a while so that both Geraldine and Mary can be married in peace. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- 1916
Two of Fox's top directors pooled their talents for this modernized adaptation of Emile Zola's Therese Raquin. Trapped in a loveless marriage, heroine Violet Horner finds herself irresistably attracted to handsome young artist Walter Miller. Conspiring to murder Horner's husband, the illicit couple are able to cover up all traces of their crime, but are less successful in keeping their guilty consciences under control. Upon learning the truth of the situation, Horner's mother Louise Rial is stricken with paralysis. For the rest of the picture, Rial lies motionless in her bed, her wide eyes betraying her knowledge of her daughter's guilt. Unable to withstand the relentless glare of those eyes, Horner and Miller ultimately commit suicide. Amazingly, the film's credits give no acknowledgement to Emile Zola, even though the storyline of The Marble Heart was instantly recognizable to anyone even remotely familiar with Zola's work. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- 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, Rovi
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