The Automobile Thieves (1906)

Interesting facts

The Automobile Thieves is an American crime-drama silent film directed by J. Stuart Blackton. The picture stars Blackton and Florence Lawrence. It was released on November 10, 1906 by The American Vitagraph Company; a print of the feature is preserved in the UCLA Film and Television Archive.

Background

In an advertisement in The New York Clipper, dated 1906, Vitagraph proclaimed that there was a "destruction by fire of a $2,000 automobile" and the picture was "founded on fact - startling in conception and execution - daringly realistic in plot and climax...not cheap, trashy, dime-novel melodrama, but a cleverly constructed, superbly acted production capable of holding the attention of intelligent, up-to-date audience".

This was Florence Lawrence's first movie; she went on to star in more Vitagraph films, but her real name never appeared on the credits. She later went to work with Biograph Studios and after marrying Harry Solter, she moved to Independent Moving Pictures Company of America (IMP). It was at Independent where Lawrence achieved her first real success with The Broken Oath.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.