Made two years before the Nineteenth Amendment granted women the right to vote, this melodrama depicts a future in which a woman holds high political office. Dorothy Davenport Reid plays an ardent suffragist who ascends from judge to governor and manages, despite the odds, to maintain her integrity. Filmed entirely in Santa Cruz and the Bay Area, the film is early evidence of Northern California’s progressive roots. “Its timeliness will strike home,” proclaimed the Motion Picture News in 1917.
The restoration is a collaboration between the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, the Library of Congress, the British Film Institute, and film archivist James Mockoski.
Musical accompaniment by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra
Introduction by Shelley Stamp
Special support provided by Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Co-presented by Bay Area Women in Film and Media and California Historical Society
ASL interpretation provided