User Reviews

Ruth Roland has been working with blind playwright William Conklin on his new play. Producer Ed Brady is anxious to get his hands on it, so commercial and brilliant a writer is Conklin. He refuses to sell, so Brady kidnaps Conklin, hypnotizes Miss Roland with a gesture, and has his mignonette Lucy Blake invade Conklin's home to steal the script. But Conklin's loyal oriental servant dies destroying the script, all of which sends Conklin's mother, Ruth Lackaye into a permanent tizzy. Back at Brady's isolated mansion, Conklin is imprisoned in the cellar. When Miss Roland is ordered to reconstruct the script in a hypnotic state, Brady conceives a pure passion for her and realizes she must play the lead.

In the end it all turns out to be a dream.

I suppose the ending is obvious to anyone who reads that precis of the events, but I was annoyed throughout. Technically it is a well photographed movie in the stolid style of the year it was made, with decent editing hiding an immobile camera. But the acting is not what one would expect of a cast that included Balboa's serial queen. Conklin looks like a petulant child looking up to indicate his blindness; Brady lacks only a handlebar mustache and top hat to play a serial villain; and Miss oland wears the same expression throughout.