When the Earth Trembled

When the Earth Trembled (1913) is an American silent disaster film starring Ethel Clayton and Harry Myers. The film, a short feature, may be the first fiction film to depict the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.^[1]

Motion Picture Story Magazine (September 1913) published a story version of the screenplay by Henry Albert Phillips.

Plot

A mother (Clayton) and her two young children live through the 1906 earthquake.

Cast

• Harry Myers as Paul Girard Jr.
• Ethel Clayton as Dora Sims
• Richard Morris as Richard
• Mrs. George W. Walters as Coffee Mary
• Bartley McCullum as Paul Girard Sr.
• Mary Powers as Dora's Little Girl
• Layton Meisle as Dora's Little Boy
• Peter Lang as John Pearce

Production

• Director O'Neil's insistence on being as realistic as possible nearly cost Clayton her life. The actress almost died in an accident in the earthquake scene, where a chandelier fell on her.^[1]
• Four months, a then-unprecedented length of time, were required to recreate the disaster.^[1]
• Lubin Studio reused some of its own 1906 newsreel footage of the quake aftermath. Most of the Lubin newsreel footage was destroyed in a later film vault fire.^[1]

Preservation status

This film was long thought to be a lost film, with no prints known to exist.^[2] In 2015, the film was restored by EYE Film Institute Netherlands from three incomplete prints from the EYE Film Institute, the British Film Institute, and the Museum of Modern Art. The restored print was premiered on 28 March 2015 at EyeMuseum.^[3]

On 29 May 2015, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival presented the film at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco.^[4]

References

External links

• When the Earth Trembled at the Internet Movie Database
• When the Earth Trembled at BFI Database
• When the Earth Trembled at SilentEra
• When the Earth Trembles at Presidio Officers Club
• European lobby poster(court. EYE Filmmuseum, Desmet Collection)