In VARIETY the original review said... "A 'somewhat different' picture story is Love Never Dies, adapted from Will N. Harben's novel, "The Cottage of Delight." Running 80 minutes the spectator is intrigued through what is apparently the final "clinch" in the first reel, which turns out to be just the beginning of an absorbingly interesting and appealing heart-interest story. Considerable ingenuity has been exercised in putting over the fact that the hero's mother is a woman of ill repute without likelihood of objection on the part of the censors." PLOT: Soon after Tilly Whaley (Madge Bellamy) happily marries her sweetheart John Trott (Lloyd Hughes), her father (Frank Brownlee) learns that his son-in-law's "mother" (Claire McDowell) has a notorious reputation. Feeling disgraced, he forces his daughter to return to his home. Not knowing the reason of his wife's desertion, and thinking she left of her own accord John leaves the small North Carolina town to work in the city. (Spoilers) There is a train wreck en route and despondent John gives his name to be placed on the list of the dead. Now believing that John has perished in a train wreck, a reluctant Tilly is persuaded by her father to marry an old beau Joel Epperson (Joseph Bennett). Years later, after John becomes successful and wealthy he returns home to visit his mother. (This next scene was missing from the print I saw) She confesses that she adopted him after the death of his real mother and it was her love for him that made her keep the fact a secret. He also learns that his wife was forced to marry a man she did not love after her father annulled her marriage and to top it all off, he has a son! When circumstances bring Tilly and John back together our hero learns that she never ceased to love him. Joel Epperson first attempts to kill John. But when he realizes that Tilly loves John, Epperson instead tries to then kill himself by riding over whirling rapids. John goes to his rescue, but husband No. 2 does not survive, and the loving couple is reunited. Since Liz Trott (Claire McDowell) proves not to be John's mother after all, Tilly and John are reunited with everyone's blessings.
King Vidor, a legendary silent film director (The Big Parade, Show People, The Patsy, La Boheme and The Crowd) is in the Guinness World Records as having the longest career as a film director" spanning 67 years - beginning with Hurricane in Galveston in 1913 and ending with the documentary The Metaphor in 1980. In 1985 he failed to raise the funds to make one last film which was to be about the life of James Murray, the ill-fated star of The Crowd. Vidor's sound films include Hallelujah (1929), The Champ (1931), Street Scene, Stella Dallas (1937), The Citadel (1938), and The Fountainhead (1949). Lloyd Hughes was a frequent co-star of Mary Astor (8 films together) and Colleen Moore (5 titles including Ella Cinders) and was known as "typical American boy" type leading man. Madge Bellamy's biggest hits were Lorna Doone (1922), The Iron Horse (1924) and White Zombie (1932) and her private life including shooting her millionaire lover, A. Standford Murphy, (he lived) and managing a junkyard before dying in 1990. Claire McDowell was best known for playing the mother of John Gilbert in The Big Parade, Ramon Novarro's mother in Ben-Hur (1925) and the mother that faints on the bus in It Happened One Night (1934)!
King Vidor, a legendary silent film director (The Big Parade, Show People, The Patsy, La Boheme and The Crowd) is in the Guinness World Records as having the longest career as a film director" spanning 67 years - beginning with Hurricane in Galveston in 1913 and ending with the documentary The Metaphor in 1980. In 1985 he failed to raise the funds to make one last film which was to be about the life of James Murray, the ill-fated star of The Crowd. Vidor's sound films include Hallelujah (1929), The Champ (1931), Street Scene, Stella Dallas (1937), The Citadel (1938), and The Fountainhead (1949). Lloyd Hughes was a frequent co-star of Mary Astor (8 films together) and Colleen Moore (5 titles including Ella Cinders) and was known as "typical American boy" type leading man. Madge Bellamy's biggest hits were Lorna Doone (1922), The Iron Horse (1924) and White Zombie (1932) and her private life including shooting her millionaire lover, A. Standford Murphy, (he lived) and managing a junkyard before dying in 1990. Claire McDowell was best known for playing the mother of John Gilbert in The Big Parade, Ramon Novarro's mother in Ben-Hur (1925) and the mother that faints on the bus in It Happened One Night (1934)!