The Girl and Her Trust (1912)

Director: D. W. Griffith

Cast: Dorothy Bernard, Wilfred Lucas, Anthony O’Sullivan

Synopsis: Some tramps assault the telegraph office trying to rob $2000 delivered by train. The telegraphist girl warns the next station and the men are captured.

It’s easy to overlook the good work from D. W. Griffith in The Girl and Her Trust, a nifty little thriller which is a remake of his previous year’s The Lonedale Operator, simply because the innovative techniques he was inventing and/or refining are commonplace today. However, anyone who has seen more than a few movies from this era will recognise the superiority of his pictures over those of his contemporaries.

The Girl and Her Trust opens up the story of The Lonedale Operator so that, instead of fending off a couple of vagabonds trying to steal a shipment of money solely from her locked office, the besieged female operator, played here a little too fulsomely by Dorothy Bernard (His Trust, His Trust Fulfilled) is kidnapped by her assailants who try to make their getaway on a railroad handcar. She’s a plucky heroine – and a resourceful one given the way she fashions a makeshift gun out of a bullet, a keyhole and a hammer – but, unlike the girl in The Lonedale Operator, she does require rescuing by the strapping young clerk whose playful advances she had earlier frostily rebuffed. He’s played by Wilfred Lucas (What Shall We Do With Our Old?, Enoch Arden) who appears to be wearing painted-on eyebrows. The girl’s hero enlists the help of a train driver to give chase on a steam train, setting up a well-staged finale which still holds up well today.

(Reviewed 13th April 2015)