Anna Christie (1923)
In this silent drama based on the play by Eugene O'Neill, Blanche Sweet plays Anna Christie, a young woman whose father Chris (George F. Marion) is a sailor and knows enough of the life of seafaring men to be certain that he doesn't want his daughter to become involved with one. Hoping to guide her to a better life, Chris sends Anna to live with relatives in Minnesota. However, she's treated cruelly there and runs away to Chicago, where she earns a living as a streetwalker. In time, she returns to the harbor town of her birth and winds up falling in love with a sailor, Matt (William Russell). Anna finds it difficult to hide her shameful past from her father and the man she loves, and eventually she is forced to confess to them both. Anna Christie was remade in 1930 in a version that gained instant fame as Greta Garbo's first talking picture.
