William Desmond Taylor may be better known as the victim of one of Hollywood's most sensational unsolved crimes but in reality, like Marshall Neilan, he was a sensitive director who had an uncanny talent at drawing out the best from young performers. He had already kick started Jack Pickford's career with "Tom Sawyer" and "Tom and Huck" and was fatefully given "Anne of Green Gables" to direct for the young star Paramount thought would supersede Mary Pickford in popularity - Mary Miles Minter. Even though as a team they succeeded for a while Mary's stage mother stepped in and within a few years Minter was finished in films, thanks to the scandal of being associated with the unsolved murder of Taylor.
Lewis Sargent had already starred in Taylor's "Huckleberry Finn" and with a story adaptation by Julia Crawford Ivers, "The Soul of Youth" took them in a new direction with a hard hitting story that throws everything at the audience - from drug addiction to civic corruption!!
Poor Ed Simpson (Sargent) is up against it from the start - sold by his mother who is alone and knows she will soon die. His new mother wants the baby to force her boyfriend, racketeer Pete Morano, into marriage and also to give her a "steady supply"!! Ed soon finds himself the head boy at the orphanage where he is kicked and cuffed by the pickle faced matrons and is the butt of pranks and jokes by the other kids. When an elderly matron comes looking for a golden curled, dimpled orphan to adopt ("we don't usually get those type here"), the girl who accompanies her, Vera (lovely Lila Lee) gets Ed thinking about Love - he doesn't know what the word means. He soon begins to understand when he befriends a dog "Simp" - together they run away and have to survive on the streets which they do with the help of a paper boy.
The years have also seen the rise, through graft and corruption, of Pete Morano but he has just been visited by a voice from the past- yes, his former cast off mistress who has only been awaiting her chance to "get even"!! Into this mix comes the Hamiltons - Ed has been caught stealing food from them but they want to give him a chance to make good - and make good he does!!
Two stars of the future - sweet Lila Lee and handsome William Collier Jnr. play the young lovers, she is Vera, younger sister of Mr. Hamilton and he is Dick Armstrong, the lazy son of the town's richest citizen. He also wants a chance to prove himself worthy of Vera's love so Hamilton gives him a job - to retrieve some important papers that will incriminate Morano once and for all. But the film really belongs to 15 year old Lewis Sargent and he makes the movie his own. Unfortunately it didn't bring him the stardom he deserved - by 1922 he was mired in shorts except for his role as Noah Claypole in the prestigious "Oliver Twist".
Lewis Sargent had already starred in Taylor's "Huckleberry Finn" and with a story adaptation by Julia Crawford Ivers, "The Soul of Youth" took them in a new direction with a hard hitting story that throws everything at the audience - from drug addiction to civic corruption!!
Poor Ed Simpson (Sargent) is up against it from the start - sold by his mother who is alone and knows she will soon die. His new mother wants the baby to force her boyfriend, racketeer Pete Morano, into marriage and also to give her a "steady supply"!! Ed soon finds himself the head boy at the orphanage where he is kicked and cuffed by the pickle faced matrons and is the butt of pranks and jokes by the other kids. When an elderly matron comes looking for a golden curled, dimpled orphan to adopt ("we don't usually get those type here"), the girl who accompanies her, Vera (lovely Lila Lee) gets Ed thinking about Love - he doesn't know what the word means. He soon begins to understand when he befriends a dog "Simp" - together they run away and have to survive on the streets which they do with the help of a paper boy.
The years have also seen the rise, through graft and corruption, of Pete Morano but he has just been visited by a voice from the past- yes, his former cast off mistress who has only been awaiting her chance to "get even"!! Into this mix comes the Hamiltons - Ed has been caught stealing food from them but they want to give him a chance to make good - and make good he does!!
Two stars of the future - sweet Lila Lee and handsome William Collier Jnr. play the young lovers, she is Vera, younger sister of Mr. Hamilton and he is Dick Armstrong, the lazy son of the town's richest citizen. He also wants a chance to prove himself worthy of Vera's love so Hamilton gives him a job - to retrieve some important papers that will incriminate Morano once and for all. But the film really belongs to 15 year old Lewis Sargent and he makes the movie his own. Unfortunately it didn't bring him the stardom he deserved - by 1922 he was mired in shorts except for his role as Noah Claypole in the prestigious "Oliver Twist".