GRETCHEN, THE GREENHORN
starring Dorothy Gish
VARIETY
August 25, 1916
Feature producers appear to be delving deeper and deeper into commonplace melodrama for scenarios and depending upon their directors to lift such tales out of the conventional by good acting, locations and photography. "Gretchen, the Greenhorn" by Bernard McConville, directed by C.M. & S.A. Franklin, starring Dorothy Gish, is a fair sample of this sort of thing. An old Dutch engraver settles in New York, eking out a living. He sends for his daughter, Gretchen. Gret is loved by a wop, and there is depicted all nationalities congregated in the tenement district. Counterfeiters have their illicit printing press on board a sailing vessel. One of them tells the innocent Dutchman to make a pair of plates for printing greenbacks to be used as samples of his work so he may secure a job in the governmental engraving department. Then ensues kidnapping, etc, and the villains are outwitted by a bunch of Irish kids who give the alarm, thereby saving the day. Magnificently depicted from all picture standpoints, but hopelessly conventianl as to story. A corking popular priced feature.