The Girl Who Stayed at Home

Brothers Ralph and James Grey react to the outbreak of World War I in Europe in very different ways. Idealistic Ralph is eager to get involved, while philanderer James would rather make time with his burlesque dancer girlfriend. The implementation of the draft makes their ideological differences moot, and both men wind up in the same regiment in the south of France. After Ralph is critically injured by an enemy shell, James brings his brother to a French chateau for medical aid. He is nursed back to health by Blossom, a beautiful young girl who lives there with her grandfather. When German officers try to take the chateau, the irresponsible James is forced to defend Ralph and Blossom from the Huns' clutches...but he may not escape the confrontation with his life...

After the excesses of his 1916 masterpiece Intolerance, legendary director D.W. Griffith became increasingly budget-conscious. For The Girl Who Stayed at Home, Griffith took advantage of the copious amounts of combat footage shot by cinematographer G.W. Bitzer for the previous year's Hearts of the World (1918). Lillian Gish was not interested in starring in this film, so leading lady duties were split between two newcomers, Carol Dempster and Clarine Seymour. Of the two, Seymour (playing the "bad girl" burlesque dancer) was clearly the more vivacious, but her mysterious death the following year meant that Dempster ended up as Griffith's go-to leading lady (her status as D.W.'s mistress didn't hurt, either.) Robert Harron and Richard Barthelemess star as the two diametrically-opposed brothers. Harron had previously starred in Birth of a Nation (1915) and was the male actor with the most onscreen time in Intolerance, but Barthelmess had never acted for Griffith before. After The Girl Who Stayed at Home, he became Griffith's preferred leading man, starring in Broken Blossoms (1919) and Way Down East (1920), among many others. Harron, distraught over Griffith's rejection of him, died of a shotgun wound at the age of 27 the following year, only five months after Clarine Seymour's death.