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| Advertisement from the January 4, 1913 edition of Moving Picture News |
The Detective's Santa Claus (1913)
Released January 14, 1913 by Eclair American Studios
Lillian Lorraine ..... Miss Steele
Will E. Sheerer ..... Tom Steele
Clara Horton ..... Molly Steele
Willie Gibbons ..... Frank Steele
Mimi Yvonne ..... Fanny Steele
George Larkin ..... Bill Tempest
For the second year in a row, this blog will feature the theme of "The Island of Lost Christmas Specials." For this new post, I will go back to the silent film era. There were many, many Christmas short films and features with child actors and famous actors that have been lost for nearly a century. The 1913 Eclair American Studios short "The Detective's Santa Claus" sounds like a charming film. In my research, not one still could be found in film magazines and catalogs that are now available from various digital collections. Among the cast are child actors Clara Horton (1904 - 1979) "The Eclair Kid" and Mimi Yvonne who starred in the 1914 version of "The Littlest Rebel" over 20 years before Shirley Temple.
The synopsis comes from the January 4, 1913 issue of Motion Picture World.
"Detective Steele is considered a most conscientious and efficient worker on the police force. He is the father of quite a family and as the Christmas holiday approaches finds himself rather hard pressed, financially. He tells his children how Santa Claus comes down the chimney on Christmas Eve and fills the stockings of all well-behaved little boys and girls with toys and candies and goodies of all kinds. The tale has made a deep impression on the minds of the children. After hanging up their stockings they hit on a plan of trapping Santa Claus, and from the attic they drag forth an old bear trap which they set and put in the fireplace. It so happens that on this very night Detective Steele with two other officers, are in pursuit of a well-known criminal for whose capture a reward of one thousand dollars has been offered. The hunted man eludes them in a chase over the roofs of the houses near the detective's own home. Believing they have lost him, Mr. Steele runs into his house for a moment to see his family, and is very much startled by a most unusual commotion in the parlor. He rushes in and discovers that the criminal he had been after, had been caught in the bear-trap the youngsters had set for Santa. The detective, of course, procures the reward, and the children have the best Christmas ever."
