On November 9, 1924, BROKEN LAWS, producer Thomas Ince's second movie with Mrs. Wallace Reid (after HUMAN WRECKAGE) was released by F.B.O. The title offered potential problems, as she admitted, because audiences might believe it was another anti-narcotics film. Instead, the new movie was a result of a survey Mrs. Reid had conducted while on tour with HUMAN WRECKAGE, where she found concern over the question of mother love and how it might be linked to increasing lawlessness.
Joan (Reid), a mother, rejects her husband's sound advice and indulges her child until, with the father's death, he becomes an arrogant teenager. As the New York Times noted in its January 21, 1925 review, "He is the sort of precocious child who is proud of the fact that there is no Santa Claus." Given an automobile, he is dating a flapper, who, like his his own mother, also came from a home where the wife lived according to modern, not traditional, mores, ignoring her husband's remonstrations. Returning from a roadhouse one night, the young couple are in an automobile accident that kills another driver.
Convicted of manslaughter, his mother asks that she serve his term, saying it is all her fault, when she awakens and realizes it was all a dream. She gives her child a spanking and returns him to school to apologize for his bad behavior. The short story by Adela Rogers St. John was bought for $5,000, adapted by Bradley King and Marion Jackson, and directed in seven reels by Roy William Neill. The director received $4,005; the cast $15,956; another $2,485 was spent on publicity, more than the cost of each of the expenses for title, cutting, or wardrobe; $26,397 went for the sets, and $5,184 for negative film, for a total of $93,305, with $15,000 for overhead, as given in the studio records on which I base my Ince biography.
Joan (Reid), a mother, rejects her husband's sound advice and indulges her child until, with the father's death, he becomes an arrogant teenager. As the New York Times noted in its January 21, 1925 review, "He is the sort of precocious child who is proud of the fact that there is no Santa Claus." Given an automobile, he is dating a flapper, who, like his his own mother, also came from a home where the wife lived according to modern, not traditional, mores, ignoring her husband's remonstrations. Returning from a roadhouse one night, the young couple are in an automobile accident that kills another driver.
Convicted of manslaughter, his mother asks that she serve his term, saying it is all her fault, when she awakens and realizes it was all a dream. She gives her child a spanking and returns him to school to apologize for his bad behavior. The short story by Adela Rogers St. John was bought for $5,000, adapted by Bradley King and Marion Jackson, and directed in seven reels by Roy William Neill. The director received $4,005; the cast $15,956; another $2,485 was spent on publicity, more than the cost of each of the expenses for title, cutting, or wardrobe; $26,397 went for the sets, and $5,184 for negative film, for a total of $93,305, with $15,000 for overhead, as given in the studio records on which I base my Ince biography.
