
Simultaneously with Mary Sudan's first chance to play a leading theatrical role comes the news that her father has been sent to prison on a false charge of theft. Determined to find the culprit and bring him to justice, she visits her father's company, posing as a wealthy widow seeking investment securities.


The camera iris opens like a wary eye onto a Broadway rehearsal room where Mary Sudan rehearses Desdemona’s death scene while her own father is measured for a convict’s stripes. That cruel counterpoint—artifice versus agony—ignites Winning with Wits, a 1926 Vitagraph release that most reference books misfile under mel...

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Comparing the cinematic DNA and archive impact of two defining moments in cult history.

Howard M. Mitchell

Howard M. Mitchell
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" The camera iris opens like a wary eye onto a Broadway rehearsal room where Mary Sudan rehearses Desdemona’s death scene while her own father is measured for a convict’s stripes. That cruel counterpoint—artifice versus agony—ignites Winning with Wits, a 1926 Vitagraph release that most reference books misfile under melodrama when it is closer to a fever-chart of capitalist panic. What follows is not the linear plod of so many silents but a spiral staircase of disguises, each step lacquered with..."

Edwin B. Tilton
H.H. Van Loan, Dorothy Yost, John Stone
United States


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