Lillian Gish in "The Mothering Heart" (1913)
20A young tender hearted woman (Lillian Gish) in a garden shows her appreciation of the flowers and her mothering two puppies. One puppy unwittingly thrust his head in an empty can and is unable to get it out. His distress causes her to forget that her young admirer has called. She is so occupied in relieving the distress of her favorites. But the difficulty is soon over and the melancholic young man (Walter Miller) sits down by her side to tell his tale of love, and woo her.
Against her better judgment she listens to him, and is foolishly swayed more by his pain of rejection than her love for him and finally agrees to marry him when she sees the distress that her negative answer has caused.
Her mothering spirit is in evidence after marriage when she helps her struggling young husband to earn their new home by taking in laundry to help support them when her new husband has little income. This she does uncomplainingly, her own trials forgotten for her loved one.
Things change when the husband finds some success in a well paid job. At the same time a new joy comes into the life of the wife. She is about to be a mother. With success comes the turning away from homely joys, and one night when the young husband returns, he becomes dissatisfied with the dinner and they go to the largest and most expensive cafe in the city, an Apache dance cabaret.
He wears a new suit but she her plain street clothes. Her husband's eye is caught by a sophisticated single woman (Viola Barry) at the next table. Later, encouraged by the woman, the husband begins to deceive his wife and have clandestine meetings with her. She is rich and has a chauffeur-driven car at her disposal. She takes him with her to the cafe. Here she gives him her gloves to care for and on their return he forgets to give then back.
The wife, now pregnant, as evidenced by her interest in baby clothes, discovers a glove in her husband's coat pocket, and struggles against her suspicions. The next night, however, she can control her feelings no longer and when the husband goes out she follows him and uncovers his deceit, going off with the idle woman.
After confronting her husband she leaves him. On his return, the young wife is ready to depart to the home of her mother (Kate Bruce) where the baby is born.
She explains that he has lost all right to her love. She returns to her mother's home where her baby is born. Meanwhile, all advances of her husband have been in vain. Accordingly, he continues to seek solace with the idle woman. There comes a time, however, when she finds a new richer male companion (Charles West) and leaves him.
About this time the baby becomes very ill and is attended by a doctor (Adolph Lestina). The mother-in-law writes the young husband telling him that if he will now come perhaps his wife will listen. He resolves to make it up with her.
The husband takes the chance, and arrives at the wife's mother's house and she allows him to see the wife and child. However the wife is still obdurate, wants none of him, and angrily rejects him. While the husband sits dejected in the garden the baby dies.
Shattered in mind and body, the distracted mother wanders to the rose garden. The beauty of the flowers, compared with her own life, arouses revengeful spirits within her heart and
taking a stick, she breaks the beauty of the flowers as life has broken all that is dear to her.
She returns to the cradle where the dead baby is lying, to find her husband bent in grief over the crib. He is tenderly holding the late child, and a new light dawns and with it comes the eternal forgiving mother love. Their hands touch and the husband sees she is still wearing her wedding ring. They are reunited in an embrace.
A 1913 American Black & White short drama film produced & directed by D.W. Griffith, cinematography by G.W. Bitzer, starring Lillian Gish, Walter Miller, Viola Barry, Kate Bruce, Charles West, and Adolph Lestina.
According to her memoirs Gish was determined to play the wife, but almost didn't get the part because Griffith thought she looked too girlish to play a married woman (she was about 20 at the time), so Lillian contrived to audition a second time in an outfit padded to enhance her figure, and landed the role.
Viola Barry (also known as Peggy Pearce) who plays the "other woman" in this film, worked at Keystone the following year and was said to be Charlie Chaplin's first girlfriend there. She played opposite Chaplin once, in "His Favorite Pastime" (1914).
For the first time Griffith really liberates his camera, dispensing with the old either/or situation of three-quarter length shots and extreme close-ups. He puts his camera exactly as far from or as close to the action as it needs to be.
This two-reel morality play was one of the first of the Biograph films to feature Lillian Gish as the central figure, and ranks with the best of D. W. Griffith's output for Biograph, and is a prime example of the best American film-making of its day.