After affiliating with Pathé in late 1916, Thanhouser produced only feature-length dramas. In 1917 the studio had a roster of only four stars, none of them a commercial match for the personality-stars created by the publicity machines of other studios. Frederick Warde, like his Thanhouser colleague Jeanne Eagels, was one of the most talented and famous stage actors in New York City, and was the perfect choice for the popular title character of this 1766 English novel adaptation. The production vindicated the new feature-length movie format by restoring several characters, plot complications and atmosphere that had been truncated in Thanhouser’s 1910 version of less than one-sixth the length.
