by Hans J. Wollstein
synopsis
Directed and written by husband-and-wife team Joseph de Grasse and Ida May Park, this Southern miscegenation melodrama featured Lon Chaney as Silas Lacey, a wicked slave owner who mistakenly believes a white-looking slave girl to be the daughter of a black woman he once raped. She isn't, of course, but it took quite a bit of absurd -- not to mention racist -- melodrama to prove that she was in fact 100% white. Played by a cast of Caucasians, this film, had it survived, would probably be all but impossible to screen today. This was the second of five films featuring Chaney opposite an Australian actress bearing the impossibly quaint moniker Louise Lovely.
