White Gold (Silent)

Alec Carson lives on a wind-blown Arizona sheep ranch with his elderly father. He incurs his father's wrath when he marries Dolores, a Mexican dance hall girl, and brings her to live on the ranch, which is suffering from a drought. The elder Carson thinks she is nothing more than a common harlot and hurls a steady stream of invective at her. Soon their marriage is fraying at the seams as the callow Alec refuses to stand up for his wife. Tensions rise even higher when the thuggish Sam Randall arrives looking for work. Seeing his prurient interest in Dolores, the old man hires him on, hoping to break up the couple. One right, the brute steals into the girl's bedroom and tries to rape her. In the morning, Randall is found dead - murdered from a gunshot wound. Old Carson accuses Dolores of the killing, and once again Alec cannot muster the courage to come to the defense of his wife. The unforgettable ending that ensues is considered one of the most memorable in the history of American silent films and indeed, all of cinema.

Possibly the most obscure film listed in Joe Franklin's Classics of the Silent Screen book due to its being out of circulation for decades, White Gold is a masterpiece that is undoubtedly a precursor to Victor Seastrom's The Wind (1928), F.W. Murnau's City Girl (1930) and George Cukor's Wild is the Wind (1957) in style, themes, and setting. A trade paper of the era described it thusly: "From the standpoint of production, scenario construction, directing and acting, White Gold compares most favorably with the best German films…The production style is of the same order as The Last Laugh (1924). Deeper psychology is revealed in this film than in any other produced in America." Director William K. Howard's films have gone under a reappraisal in recent years for their innovative narrative structure, with The Power and the Glory (1933) now seen as a major influence on Citizen Kane (1941). Before his death in 1954, Howard was working on a script for a sound version of White Gold that would have starred Charles Laughton - a remake that sadly never came to pass as no existing print of the original could be found for reference at that time.