Blue Jeans (1917 film)

Blue Jeans
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Directed by	John H. Collins
Written by	June Mathis Charles A. Taylor
Based on	Blue Jeans by Joseph Arthur
Cinematography	John Arnold William H. Tuers
Distributed by	Metro Pictures
Release date	December 10, 1917 (1917-12-10)
Running time	7 reels (approximately 70 minutes)
Country	United States
Language	Silent (English intertitles)

Blue Jeans is a 1917 American silent drama film, based on the 1890 play Blue Jeans by Joseph Arthur that opened in New York City to great popularity. The sensation of the play was a dramatic scene where the unconscious hero is placed on a board approaching a huge buzz saw in a sawmill, later imitated to the point of cliché.[1][2]

Prints survive at several archives including the George Eastman House Motion Picture Collection.[3][1]

Lobby card

Plot

Cast

• Viola Dana as June
• Robert D. Walker as Perry Bascom
• Sally Crute as Dora Eudaly
• Clifford Bruce as Ben Boone
• Henry Hallam as Colonel Henry Clay Risener
• Russell Simpson as Jacob Tutwiler
• Margaret McWade as Cindy Tutwiler
• Augustus Phillips as Jack Bascom

Reception

Like many American films of the time, Blue Jeans was subject to cuts by city and state film censorship boards. For example, the Chicago Board of Censors required a cut of the intertitle "You have transgressed the moral law" etc., the starting of the saw and the laying of the man on the block before it, and three scenes of the man in front of the saw.[4]

References

1. "Silent Era : Progressive Silent Film List". Silentera.com. Retrieved January 13, 2018.
2. The American Film Institute Catalog Feature Films: 1911-20 by The American Film Institute, c.1988
3. "Blue Jeans". Lcweb2.loc.gov. January 13, 2018. Retrieved January 13, 2018.
4. "Official Cut-Outs by the Chicago Board of Censors". Exhibitors Herald. 6 (5). New York: Exhibitors Herald Company: 33. January 26, 1918.

External links

• Blue Jeans at IMDb
• Lantern slide