The Woman Who Gave

1918 American film

November 10, 1918 (1918-11-10)

Running time

6 reelsCountryUnited StatesLanguageSilent (English intertitles)

The Woman Who Gave is a lost^[1] 1918 American silent melodrama film directed by Kenean Buel and starring Evelyn Nesbit, a former Gibson Girl, "It girl" model and showgirl involved in a 1906 "trial of the century" that involved a killing and an allegation of rape – whose films often exploited the fame of her life story. The film was produced and distributed by the Fox Film Corporation. The film went into release the day before fighting in World War I ended.^[2]

Cast

Evelyn Nesbit as Colette
Irving Cummings as Adrien Walcott
Robert Walker as Don Walcott
Eugene Ormonde as Prince Vacarra
Dorothy Walters as Delia Picard
Russell Thaw (Nesbit's son) as Rudolph

Reception

Like many American films of the time, The Woman Who Gave was subject to restrictions and cuts by city and state film censorship boards. For example, the Chicago Board of Censors required a cut, in Reel 1, of the intertitle "Colette is not that kind", the entire struggle incident including closeups of a man suggestively leering at a young woman, the woman's look of fear, the dragging of the woman towards the bedroom, and the two intertitles "Let me go or I'll kill myself" and "You are mine and there is no escape", in Reel 2, all closeups of men at a table looking salaciously at a young semi-nude woman on the table, the first and third scenes of the semi-nude woman on the table and a flash repetition of it in the second scene, and, in Reel 4, a man pulling the gown off of a woman's shoulder and kissing her.^[3]

References

^ The Library of Congress American Silent Feature Film Survival Catalog: The Woman Who Gave
^ The AFI Catalog of Feature Films: The Woman Who Gave
^ "Official Cut-Outs by the Chicago Board of Censors". Exhibitors Herald. 7 (24). New York City: Exhibitors Herald Company: 42. December 7, 1918.