Rescued from an Eagle's Nest (1908)

Interesting facts

• Filmed in: Fort Lee

Rescued from an Eagle's Nest is a 1908 American silent action-drama film produced by Edwin S. Porter for Edison Studios and directed by J. Searle Dawley. It features the first leading screen role of the legendary American filmmaker D. W. Griffith, whose directorial debut was released just six months after he performed in this production. Griffith's casting in the Edison film began when he found himself stranded and broke in New York City after a play he authored had failed. Desperate for money, he responded to Edison's offer to pay $15 to anyone who submitted a useable treatment or scenario based on the Puccini opera Tosca.

Production and reception

Most of the production was filmed indoors on sets at Edison's new studio facilities located at the intersection of Decatur Avenue and Oliver Place in the Bronx. The brief outdoor footage showing the woodsmen chopping down a tree was taken on the Palisades at Fort Lee, New Jersey.

The simulations presented on screen of a stuffed, articulated eagle flapping its wings while appearing to hold a real child in flight no doubt thrilled some filmgoers in 1908; however, the reviewer at the time for The Moving Picture World found the overall effect unconvincing. "The trick", he remarked, "of the eagle with its wire wings is too evident to the audience, while the fight between the man and eagle is poor and out of vision."

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