Lady of the Night

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Blue Water

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Film Information:
Production: Not Available;

Premiere: Not Available;
Released: May 1924;
Production/Distribution Companies: New Brunswick Films Ldt. of St. Jown, New Brunswick ;
Director: David M. Hartford;
Based on the book by Frederick William Wallace;
Photography: unknown;
Film editor: unknown;
Running time: unknown(lost);
Not available on VHS or DVD;

Cast: Pierre Gendron as Jimmie Westhaver; Jane Thomas as Carrie; Norma Shearer as Lillian Denton; John Webb Dillon as John Dillon;

An explanation about the movie written by Jack Jacobs in The Films of Norma Shearer:

Information on this film was practically impossible to track down until I wrote to the Canadian Film Institute, which was kind enough to send me the necessary details such as credits, cast, and synopsis, all of which are reproduced here. Having checked every available sources on movies, including newspapers and a few Canadian magazines, Blue Water never came to light. And it wasn't Blue Waters as I thought, but Blue Water. The Film Daily Yearbook listed it as Blue Waters, but no review date was mentioned.

I first came across a capsule review mentioned as Blue Waters in Harrison's Reports and Norma Shearer and Pierre Gendron were listed as the cast, but no author, director, or other players etc. According to this review the story had to do with a rich girl who falls in love with a Canadian fisherman, which may be so, but the synopsis that has been sent to me differs from what I first saw. What I have here, apparently, is the more factual story, yet the plot if one can call it one, is a bit confused, so I wrote it as I found it, since there were no reviews to check. According to Mr. Peter Morris, the curator of the Canadian Film Institute, Blue Water was reviewed in the Canadian Moving Picture Digest, May 3, 1924, but no such trade journal exists here in L.A. or even at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Research Library, USC, UCLA, or the main public library, all of which I‘ve checked. The film seems never to have been released, except on a States Rights basis, and there appear to be no US reviews as I‘ve discovered in my painstaking research on this.

Another story about Blue Water is that it had a very limited release and the company which produced it under promoter Ernest Shipman went bankrupt. The company planned to make a second film, but it never developed.

I hope this explains why it was so difficult for me to come across a review of Blue Water.

Blue Water was completed in late 1922 and was being advertised for release by February 1923, but seems not to have been actually shown before May 1924.

--Jack Jacobs in, The Films of Norma Shearer.