A Child for Sale
| A Child for Sale | |
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Film poster
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| Directed by | Ivan Abramson |
| Produced by | Ivan Abramson |
| Written by | Ivan Abramson |
| Starring | Gladys Leslie, Creighton Hale |
| Cinematography | Louis Dunmyre |
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Production
company |
Graphic Films Corp.
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| Distributed by | Graphic Films Corp. |
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Release date
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Running time
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6 reels (approximately 60 minutes) |
| Country | United States |
| Language | Silent (English intertitles) |
A Child for Sale is a 1920 American silent drama film directed by Ivan Abramson, starring Gladys Leslie and Creighton Hale.
Charles Stoddard (played by Hale) is a poor artist living with his wife and two children in Greenwich Village. Destitute after his wife dies, he is forced to sell one of his children for $1,000 to a childless rich woman. He soon comes to his senses however, and backs out of the deal. From there, the story takes a number of twists and turns involving Ruth Gardner (Leslie) (the wife of Dr. Gardner who treats Stoddard's child for illness) and Ruth's parents -- whose father is also Stoddard's landlord and mother is later revealed to be Stoddard's long-lost mother from a prior marriage.
The ad campaign for the film included a faux advertisement for selling a child.
Critic Burns Mantle noted some shortcomings of the film in his review of the "melodramatic opus" in Photoplay, stating that "Ivan Abramson's idea of what constitutes a coherent and convincing dramatic story, taking this picture as a sample, offer many opportunities for the raucous hoot and the mirthful snort. ...His picture is an inartistic jumble of unrelated incidents to me ..." Other contemporary reviews were of a more non-specific and generally positive nature, such as the review by the New York Clipper which described the picture as "intensely interesting from start to finish."
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