Watch the full film: A Virgin's Sacrifice (aka A Woman's Sacrifice, 1922)
Runtime: 01:10:57
A Virgin’s Sacrifice (aka A Woman’s Sacrifice, 1922)
Production Co.: Vitagraph Co. of America. Producer: Albert E. Smith. Director: Webster Campbell. Cinematographer: Arthur Ross. Scenario: William B. Courtney. Cast: Corinne Griffith (Althea Sherrill), Curtis Cooksey (Tom Merwin), David Torrence (David Sherrill), Louise Cussing (Mrs. Sherrill), Nick Thompson (Jacques), Miss Eagle (Nokomis), George MacQuarrie (Sam Bellows), Charles Henderson (Batielle). Transfer Note: Copied at 18 frames per second from 35mm print preserved by the George Eastman Museum. New Music: Michael Mortilla. Running Time: 71 minutes.
“There is only one beautiful star in Hollywood,” proclaimed Gloria Swanson, “and that is Corinne Griffith. The rest of us are only types.” Photoplay agreed, naming Corinne Griffith “Hollywood’s Prize Beauty,” and so did the public, which during the mid-to-late ’20s placed “the orchid lady of the screen” among the top ten actresses at the box office in exhibitors’ polls. But behind Corinne Griffith’s beauty was a keen mind for the business of making films and making money.
Born in 1894 in Waco, Texas, as Corinne Griffin (her stage name likely inspired by D. W. Griffith), she grew up with ambitions for film stardom. With the help of fellow Texan King Vidor she joined the Vitagraph company in 1916, on a $15‐per‐week contract. A year later she was in leading roles; by 1920 she was Vitagraph’s most popular star. Becoming too expensive for that studio, she decamped to First National in 1923, where her weekly salary rose to $2,500. She also created her own company, Corinne Griffith Productions, which released its films through First National, and executive produced twelve features, maintaining her choice of scripts, leading men, and directors. “Until I started producing my own pictures I never was anything but a clothes horse,” she told the press. By the height of her stardom in 1927 she was making $10,000 a week and commencing investments that would turn her into a Beverly Hills real estate tycoon, the first woman to address the National Realty Board.
A Virgin’s Sacrifice was released in May 1922 and shows Griffith on the cusp of stardom. She was near the end of her stint with Vitagraph; the studio, founded in 1897, was the last surviving one from the early years of American filmmaking. The film is set in “the white-bound heart of Canada that lies within the Arctic Circle,” and concerns a rifle-toting woman who convinces a government researcher to pose as her husband and help combat a villainous poacher who threatens her reputation. Though its story and setting give the star a break from clothes horse roles and allow her to play a heroine with initiative, A Virgin’s Sacrifice exemplifies the sort of “very fine program picture” (to quote Exhibitors Herald) that paved Griffith’s way to the big leagues. It deals with a familiar subject: a beautiful, pure-minded woman defending herself against a world of rogues and lechers. The titular use of “Virgin,” proved a hot potato in some areas; in Nebraska and Kansas the title was changed to A Woman’s Sacrifice. Dallas banned the film outright.
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https://www.filmpreservation.org/preserved-films/screening-room/a-virgin-s-sacrifice-1922