A Florida Enchantment

A Florida Enchantment
Film advertisement
Directed by Sidney Drew
Produced by Sidney Drew
Written by Marguerite Bertsch
Eugene Mullin
Starring Edith Storey
Sidney Drew
Ethel Lloyd
Cinematography Robert A. Stuart
Distributed by Vitagraph Studios
Release date
  • 1914 (1914)
Running time
 63 minutes
(at 20 frame/s)
Country United States
Language Silent film
English intertitles

A Florida Enchantment (1914) is a silent film directed by and starring Sidney Drew and released by Vitagraph Studios. The film is based on the 1891 novel and 1896 play (now lost) of the same name written by Fergus Redmond and Archibald Clavering Gunter.

Plot

In the film, Lillian Travers, a wealthy Northern woman about to be married, takes a magical seed which transforms its user into the opposite gender. Lillian's transformation into Lawrence Talbot has also sometimes been read as a transformation into a butch lesbian. This reading is bolstered by the later transformation of Lillian's fiancé into what could be an effeminate gay man. However, as Lillian and her fiancé are shown attracted both to each other and to the same sex (albeit at different times), the film has also been considered to have the first documented appearance of bisexual characters in an American motion picture.[1]

Cast

  • Edith Storey - Lillian Travers/Lawrence Talbot
  • Sidney Drew - Dr. Frederick Cassadene
  • Ethel Lloyd - Jane
  • Grace Stevens - Constancia Oglethorpe
  • Charles Kent - Major Horton
  • Jane Morrow - Bessie Horton
  • Ada Gifford - Stella Lovejoy
  • Lillian Burns - Malvina
  • Allan Campbell - Stockton Remington
  • Cortland van Deusen - Charley Wilkes
  • Frank O'Neil - Gustavus Duncan

Production background

The film is also known for its use of blackface antics; an aspect carefully dissected in Siobhan Somerville's "Queering the Color Line." Since its inclusion in Vito Russo's The Celluloid Closet, the film has increasingly been seen as one of the earliest film representations of homosexuality and cross-dressing in American culture.

References

  1. ↑ ">> arts >> Bisexuality in Film". glbtq. Archived from the original on 2012-10-15. Retrieved 2012-11-06.


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