Old Heidelberg

Karl Heinrich may be the pampered heir to the throne of Rutania, but he lives a lonely life of seclusion. After passing his military examinations, he is sent to Heidelberg University. For the first time, Karl finds friends...and love, in the form of Katie, a poor innkeeper's daughter. War breaks out in Rutania, claiming the life of Karl's father. The only way to end the conflict is for Karl to marry the daughter of the king of the warring nation. In doing so, the student prince will have to leave Katie behind, and all he has come to love in Heidelberg. Old Heidelberg is based on the famous 1901 play by Wilhelm Meyer-Förster. Producer D.W. Griffith made Meyer-Förster's story into a polemic against World War I. Leading man Wallace Reid had been in Griffith's classics The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916). Tragically, he would be badly injured in a 1919 train wreck, leading to a morphine addiction that caused his death four years later at age 31. Dorothy Gish, like her older sister Lillian Gish, was featured in Griffith's films. Erich von Stroheim, recently arrived from Germany, appears in his first credited acting role. As part of von Stroheim's apprenticeship with Griffith, he served as assistant director and military technical advisor on Old Heidelberg. Harold Goodwin, who plays Karl at age 12, later portrayed Detering in All Quiet on the Western Front (1930).

BONUS: Resurrection (1909): D.W. Griffith directed this short, one reel adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's immortal novel about a poor peasant girl who falls in love with a Russian prince, and suffers for it.