A Woman in Grey (1920)

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Director:

James Vincent

Writers:

Walter R. Hall, A.M. Williamson (story)

Stars:

Arline Pretty, Henry G. Sell, Fred C. Jones

Cast

Credited cast:
Arline Pretty	...	Ruth Hope - The Woman in Grey
Henry G. Sell	...	Tom Thurston - Amory's Attorney
Fred C. Jones	...	J. Havilland Hunter - A Man of Mystery
John Heenan	...	Wilfred Amory - Retired Attorney
Margaret Fielding	...	Paula Dunne - Amory's Niece
Ann Brody	...	Miss Traill - Companion to Ruth Hope
Jane Mair	...	Grace Carleton
Jack Newton	...	Ralph Gordon
J.W. Driscoll	...	Dr. Lepell
Jack Manning	...	Gangster
Walter Chapin	...	Gangster
Violet De Biccari	...	(as Violet De Bicari)
Adelaide Fitz-Allen	...	(as Adelaide Fitzgallen)
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Marguerite Namara

Storyline

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Plot Keywords:

bound and gagged | train | tied to a chair | quicksand | graveyard | 

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Genres:

Drama

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Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

22 January 1920 (USA)

Filming Locations:

Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

Serico Producing Company Inc.

Technical Specs

Runtime:

235 min (15 chapters)

Sound Mix:

Silent

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

CHAPTER TITLES: 1. The House of Mystery; 2. The Dagger of Death; 3. The Trap of Steel; 4. The Strangle Knot; 5. The Chasm of Fear; 6. The Grip of Fate 7. At the Mercy of Flames 8. The Drop to Death 9. Burning Strands 10. House of Horrors 11. Fight for Life 12. Circumstantial Evidence 13. The Secret Chamber 14. Pages of the Past 15. Exonerated.

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Connections

Featured in Coming Attractions: The History of the Movie Trailer (2009)

User Reviews

serial for (retarded?) adults

A Woman in Grey is based on a very creaky melodramatic Victorian novel of the same name by A.M. and C.N. Williamson (1898). It is sometimes described as one of the last "adult" serials but the term "adult" here is distinctly relative. Pretty is a doughty heroine but it is really the silliest nonsense imaginable, endlessly repetitive (just try and count the times you see the same wretched "secret passage"), hopelessly illogical completely without humour and with a degree of sadistic violence that is completely at odds with the supposed motives of the characters involved. A man who wants to get a girl to decipher a code for him spends most of his time throwing her off cliffs and bridges and chucking her out of windows. A man who supposedly loves her hands her over to a pair of highly implausible sadistic serial killers....

There is not much mystery to the serial except for the entirely unexplained madman who makes an appearance in one episode (the solution is readily guessable more or less from the outset) but there is a profound mystery surrounding the US serial film in general What was it in US cinematic practice (and it may very well have something to do with the influence of Griffith) that made it impossible, however many serials were churned out, for the US to make anything that came even remotely close to the charm and magic of the great French serials of Feuillade? In the posh little English town of Bath, Charles Norris Williamson died this same year - probably from shame.