While J. Searle Dawley had made many shorts and features during the silent era, he's not the reason I included this film in my Early Works of Film Directors series of reviews on this site. In fact, I hadn't even known about him till I looked up this short on this site just now. No, the reason I included this one is because of who the leading actor in this one was: a future director named D. W. Griffith! He was from the theater and had written some plays but his last one was not successful so he submitted a script to the Edison studio which was rejected by the producer from there-one Edwin S. Porter-the same one who had made the innovative and popular The Great Train Robbery several years back. But since Griffith was also an actor, Porter decided to cast him here as a man whose son gets kidnapped by an eagle just as he's working with other men on chopping trees. Porter was also the cinematographer here so there are some pretty good matching of studio and location shots. The model animal isn't too bad especially when it carries the live baby. Some close-ups would have helped especially since it's not easy to recognize the lead actor as Griffith. But this was pretty entertaining for the 7-minute running time. Griffith would appear as extras in other films which would eventually help him prepare for his own directorial debut which happened later in the year he made this one...
