The Golden Claw is a 1915 American

Cinema of the United States

The cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...

 dramatic film produced by Thomas H. Ince

Thomas H. Ince

Thomas Harper Ince was an American silent film actor, director, screenwriter and producer of more than 100 films and pioneering studio mogul. Known as the "Father of the Western", he invented many mechanisms of professional movie production, introducing early Hollywood to the "assembly line"...

, written by C. Gardner Sullivan

C. Gardner Sullivan

C. Gardner Sullivan was an American screenwriter and motion picture producer. He was a prolific writer with more than 350 films among his credits. In 1924, the magazine Story World selected him on a list of the ten individuals who had contributed the most to the advancement of the motion picture...

, and directed by Reginald Barker. It was a five-reel drama released by Kay-Bee Pictures and starred Bessie Barriscale

Bessie Barriscale

Bessie Barriscale was an American silent film and stage actress, and a major star for producer Thomas Ince in the late 1910s.-Early life and career:...

.

Plot

Newspaper advertising for the film described it as a “Story of Love and Wall Street,” showing the “Baleful Power of Passion for Gold,” where “Mammon’s Golden Claw Parts Man and Wife.”

Bessie Barriscale played the role of Lillian Henry, “a beautiful young girl who enjoys all the tinsel and glitter of society life and is willing to marry simply for money and all the luxuries and pleasures that its possession will bring.” One reviewer described Barriscale’s character as a “young girl” who “decides that she will practically sell herself to a youth of wealth.” Frank Mills plays Bert Werden, “the young unspoiled man, who was determined to give his wife her fill of his continual search for the golden fleece.”

Following their marriage, Bert Werden loses his fortune, and his wife goads him to restore her to wealth and luxury again. He works day and night and bets on the stock market. His health is almost wrecked and he becomes “money mad” and neglects his wife. Eventually, both characters learn that other things are more important than money. Barriscale’s character wins her husband back and gives him $50,000, a sum he had given her at the start of their marriage, to give him a new start.

Cast

• Bessie Barriscale
  Bessie Barriscale
  Bessie Barriscale was an American silent film and stage actress, and a major star for producer Thomas Ince in the late 1910s.-Early life and career:...
  
   ..... Lillian Henry
• Frank Mills ..... Bert Werden
• Robert Dunbar ..... Alec Werden
• Wedgwood Nowell ..... Graham Henderson
• Truly Shattuck
  Truly Shattuck
  Truly Shattuck was a soubrette star of vaudeville, music halls and Broadway whose career began in tragedy and ended in relative obscurity.-Early Life:...
  
  ..... Lucy Hillary

Critical reception

One reviewer said of the film: "A motion picture story of the highest class, of vital subject, original development and striking characterization, 'The Golden Claw' is one of those rare products calculated to interest many millions of intelligent people and bring into the fold those other millions of intelligent people who are repelled by poor examples of new art." The same reviewer praised the film’s direct approach in dealing with its subject matter:

"'The Golden Claw' attacks the problem of money madness with great simplicity and directness so far as the line of action is concerned, but the admirable solution is so subtle that only fine characterization and such powerful interpretation as that given by Bessie Barriscale and Frank Mills."

Another reviewer noted: "As a bitter satire on the futility of piling up money simply for the sake of possessing it, the film is declared to be exceptionally strong."