AllMovie

Whenever producer Thomas H. Ince took directorial credit on one of his films, one always suspected that someone else really called the shots. As of this writing, however, we have no evidence suggesting that Ince was not the director of The Alien. Stage star George Beban, who'd previously played a downtrodden immigrant in The Italian, basically recreates that characterization herein. The film was based on the venerable vaudeville sketch "The Sign of the Rose", cowritten by Beban and C. T. Dazey; in fact, it was designed as the prologue for a live presentation of that sketch. Essentially, this is the story of a poverty-stricken Italian who comes to a fancy florist's shop, hoping to obtain a few flowers for his daughter's grave. Fifty years after The Alien, Danny Thomas poignantly recreated "The Sign of the Rose" for one of his television specials.