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BFI Most Wanted: the hunt for Britain's missing films

Directed by Herbert Wilcox, 1926

The adventure of a girl of the slums who is adopted by a titled lady but eventually marries an artist.

The Limehouse waif (Dorothy Gish) with her only friend

Credits

Director Production Company Producer	Herbert Wilcox British National Pictures Herbert Wilcox
Cast: Dorothy Gish; John Manners; Adelqui Millar; Margaret Yarde; Hubert Carter; Elissa Landi; Adeline Hayden Coffin.
5,400 feet, silent, black & white.

Why are we so keen to find it?

Partly as one of the four films made by Dorothy Gish in this country but also as an adaptation of one of Thomas Burke's evocative Limehouse stories. These were popular in the US - the great D.W. Griffith paid £1,000 for the rights to (brace yourself) 'The Chink and the Child', and had a popular and critical hit with it under the more sensitive title Broken Blossoms (1919). It's also by a noted director, Herbert Wilcox, known particularly for a run of hugely successful 1940s melodramas starring his wife Anna Neagle (most of them, by contrast with London, centring on the capital's upper-middle classes).

What's it about?

A Limehouse waif lives with a heartless 'aunt' in sordid surroundings and is harrassed by a Chinese man, who is supported in his actions by the aunt. In the neighbourhood the girl's innocence makes her a popular figure and she comes to the attention of a wandering artist who is studying East End 'types'. He sketches the girl and hangs the portrait in his studio where it is seen by a titled Lady who sees in it a likeness of her dead daughter. The girl is forced to leave her lodgings as the attentions of the Chinaman become oppressive and she makes her way up West, where she runs into the titled Lady. She is adopted and tries to integrate into Society, but having been rejected by a 'man about town', she returns to her old haunts. The artist seeks her out and asks her to marry him

Last seen?

Not since release.

What else do we know about it?

The stories of the mythical Limehouse were popular in the US and its unlikely that the choice of subject is a coincidence. Wilcox and his commercial partner J.D. Williams tailored their material to appeal to a broad market but with a particular American focus. The employment of major American stars was a part of the strategy - not cheap; Dorothy Gish was on an astonishing £1,000 a week - and major investment was made in new studio premises at Elstree, whose 40-acre site was intended to be the foundations of a British Hollywood. The studios were snapped up by John Maxwell, who built the empire that would become Associated British Pictures while Wilcox went off to produce more stirring British product for our friends across the pond.

Does anything survive?

The BFI Stills, Posters and Designs department holds a handful of stills.

Reviews

The Bioscope's review (27 January 1927) is generally positive, issuing top marks for staging and photography. Many of the minor characters are singled out: notably John Manners as the artist and Adelqui Millar as the man about town. There is an early appearance for the star of Anthony Asquith's Underground, Elissa Landi, but most of the praise is saved for Dorothy Gish' who dominates the picture, and a very charming and pathetic figure she makes of the Limehouse Waif'. The story, it claims, is not convincing and halting in places which seems to suggest that Wilcox did not have a good screenwriter - as with the disappointing Tip Toes there is no credit given for a writer.

Bryony Dixon, Curator (Silent Film), BFI National Archive

You can find more about British films of the 1920s, including entries on surviving films and video clips for users in UK schools, colleges, universities and public libraries, at BFI Screenonline. You can also view similar titles at the BFI Mediatheques.