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| Jack Ford: The Scarlet Drop (US 1918). Molly Malone (Molly Calvert), Harry Carey ("Kaintuck"). From: The National. |
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| Jack Ford: The Scarlet Drop (US 1918). From: IMDb. |
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| Jack Ford: The Scarlet Drop (US 1918). Molly Malone (Molly Calvert), Harry Carey ("Kaintuck"). From: IMDb. |
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| Jack Ford: The Scarlet Drop (US 1918). Molly Malone (Molly Calvert), Harry Carey ("Kaintuck"). Photo: Cineteca Nacional de Chile, Santiago / Cinemateca del Pacifico. |
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| Jack Ford: The Scarlet Drop (US 1918). Mother and son. Anna Townsend as Mother Ridge, Harry Carey as "Kaintuck" Harry Ridge. The disdain of the Calverts towards the Ridges in front of the church. |
La gota escarlata / La goccia rossa. (US 1918) dir: Jack Ford. scen: George Healey, Jack Ford. photog: Ben F. Reynolds. cast: Harry Carey (“Kaintuck” Harry Ridge), Molly Malone (Molly Calvert), Betty Schade (Betty Calvert), Vester Pegg (Marley Calvert), Millard K. Wilson (Graham Lyons), Martha Mattox (Mammy [Ana Jackson]), Steve Clemente (Buck Jackson). rel: 24.4.1918. prod: Universal. copy: DCP, 41' (from 35 mm pos. nitr., incompl., 730 m [2395 ft], 18 fps, col., tinting); titles: SPA. source: Cineteca Nacional de Chile, Santiago/Cinemateca del Pacífico.
Incomplete; the nitrate print is missing 10-15 minutes of the original film’s 5 reels.
44th Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone: Rediscoveries.
Grand piano: Philip Carli.
Viewed at Cinemazero with e-subtitles in Italian, 11 Oct 2025
Richard Abel (GCM 2025): "The Scarlet Drop was the seventh feature film, nearly all westerns, that the young filmmaker Jack Ford directed with Harry Carey as the star. The next film that the two made together was the better-known Hell Bent. The Scarlet Drop was thought lost until an incomplete print was found at the Chilean Film Archive. In its Spanish intertitles, several major characters’ names are changed: Harry becomes Mell, Molly becomes Paulina, Marley becomes Markleo, Betty becomes Alice, and Mammy becomes Ana. A church service also becomes a Catholic Mass."
"The play The Girl of the Golden West (1905), written and directed by David Belasco, provided a crucial scene for Healey and Ford’s scenario: the revelation of the climactic drop of blood. Extremely successful, the play was repeatedly performed, and adapted into a 1910 novel, a 1910 Puccini opera (La fanciulla del West), and 1915 and 1923 silent films. Movie theatres screening the 1923 version introduced it with sometimes elaborate stage prologues of the dance hall/barroom, as in Balaban and Katz’s flagship Chicago theatre and the Strand in Milwaukee, Wisconsin."
"The story begins in Kentucky just prior to the Civil War and then shifts west several years later to the Kansas-Missouri border. “Kaintuck” and his mother are “white trash,” while Molly is the younger daughter favored by old man Calvert who is deathly ill and cared for by Mammy, his “house negro.” “Kaintuck” is so despised by the aristocratic Calverts that Molly’s brother Marley, along with his wealthy neighbor Lyons, refuses to let him join the Confederate forces. Moving west, he meets Quantrill’s Raiders but becomes an outlaw on his own. When Molly travels by stagecoach to visit Marley and Lyons who have partnered in a mine,"
"“Kaintuck” carries her off and they slowly become friendly. Later Lyons discovers Marley is in financial straits and blackmails him into giving him power over Molly. Now the outlaw, of course, comes to the rescue. But in the struggle with Lyons, he is shot and has to hide in an attic room until a “scarlet drop” falls through the floorboards and betrays him to a sheriff and his posse. With Molly and Marley’s help he escapes, and later returns to rejoin them. And that leads to Marley’s shocking revelation about the Calvert family."
"Carey plays “Kaintuck” much like he does “Cheyenne” in other early Ford westerns, but here he initially goes barefoot, even in church. Certain scenes stand out: the deep space of the church interior where Molly befriends his mother; the night lighting when “Kaintuck” enters Quantrill’s camp; the unusual camera angles used to depict his stagecoach hold-up; the climactic fight between “Kaintuck” and Lyons; and the “lights out” darkness that lets him, but not Lyons, escape."
"An item in Exhibitors Herald (May 1918), reported that the Chicago Board of Censors gave The Scarlet Drop an “Adults Only” permit. In early 1919, however, Dorothy Day called Carey a “regular chap” and a favorite of young boys in Des Moines, Iowa; two years later, even in Chicago, Mae Tinée wrote that he was her “idea of a real western hero.” The Chicago Board also demanded half a dozen “cut-outs”: i.e., “shooting man standing in church yard” in Reel 1; all of the stagecoach robbery oddly, “except where girl and bandit are conversing”; and several scenes of the fight in which a “man presses knife towards opponent” in Reel 5. Some of these are not present in the surviving print."
"Following The Phantom Riders (unfortunately still lost), which robes its horseback villains in white hoods and coats reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan, The Scarlet Drop makes a more direct critique of the contradictory racial relations defining the Southern aristocracy prior to the Civil War. If old man Calvert apparently frees Mammy from slavery before dying, a letter Marley discovers finally reveals his dark family secret." – Richard Abel
AA: As The Scarlet Drop is one of Jack Ford's earliest surviving films, it is striking how many familiar motifs appear immediately in the beginning. Abraham Lincoln in person. The love between mother and son. The contrast between the tramp "Kaintuck" Harry Ridge (Harry Carey) and the Calvert family of Southern aristocrats. The hypocrisy of "pious Christians" in front of the Church (see photo above).
Long before John Wayne appeared as Ethan Edwards, Harry Carey played the antihero or even a villain. The Civil War breaks out. Harry, refused entry to the Confederates, joins the infamous gang of criminals called Quantrill's Raiders, "the scum of both armies", and goes on as a solo outlaw.
The theme of racism runs deep. Not only is this a Civil War story. The haughty Calvert family is hiding a burning secret involving racial lineage.
In passages of Harry's life of crime Ford displays talent as an action director. He has seen the best of the Westerns, such as William S. Hart's The Narrow Trail (US 1917). The hold-up on the mountain road is equally powerfully staged in The Scarlet Drop. The chases are thrilling. Ford works with Ben F. Reynolds, Hart's cinematographer was Joseph H. August. They may have studied each other's work. They know how to compose an electrifying long shot. Determining the horizon is a matter of both realism and metaphysics.
I learn from Richard Abel's program note above that the motif of the scarlet drop was inspired by David Belasco's play The Girl of the Golden West (1905) which had been filmed in 1915 by Cecil B. DeMille. The motif had also been used by D. W. Griffith in The Fight for Freedom (US 1908). The final homage was paid by Howard Hawks in Rio Bravo (US 1959).
Seeing this movie at an edition of Le Giornate dedicated to the Chaplin Connection I can't help thinking about the affinity of Harry the tramp with Charlie the tramp. The poverty, the marginalization, the tattered clothes, the lure of crime. In the beginning, Harry does not even have shoes. NB. Last night we saw Charles Chaplin in Shoulder Arms (US 1918), premiere on 27 Oct 1918. This morning we see Harry Carey in The Scarlet Drop (US 1918), premiere on 24 April 1918.
Fordian and Chaplinian about this is Harry's inner dignity, instantly on display in his tender care of his mother. Harry is despised by the Calverts, who own the town. "But they don't own me".
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