The Telephone Girl and the Lady (1913)

Telephone Girl and the Lady, The (1913)

*** (out of 4)

D.W. Griffith short intercuts two different stories before mixing them together at the end. The film focuses on a telephone girl (Mae Marsh) who leaves work for her lunch break at the same time as "The Lady" (Claire McDowell) goes to a jewelry store to pick up some priceless jewels. When the telephone girl returns to work she gets a phone call from the house of "The Lady" as a robbery (Harry Carey) has broken in and is trying to steal the jewels. This is certainly Griffith experimenting with how to work the format and for the most part he succeeds. I think the early stories could have been handled a little bit better but it's clear Griffith was just using that to set up the ending, which contains some nice suspense of the thief slowly torments a maid to try and get the jewels while the police are trying to get to the scene. Marsh turns in another fine performance as does Carey as the thief. Lionel Barrymore can be seen playing the cop who answers the telephone call from Marsh.