A Florida Enchantment

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A Florida Enchantment
DVD cover
Directed by	Sidney Drew
Produced by	Sidney Drew
Written by	Marguerite Bertsch Eugene Mullin
Starring	Edith Storey Sidney Drew Ethel Lloyd
Cinematography	Robert A. Stuart
Distributed by	Vitagraph
Release date(s)	1914
Running time	63 minutes (at 20 fps)
Country	United States
Language	Silent film English intertitles
Preceded by	A Horseshoe for Luck
Followed by	The Royal Wild West
IMDb profile

A Florida Enchantment is a 1914 Vitagraph silent film directed by and starring Sidney Drew. The film is based on the 1891 novel and 1896 play (now lost) of the same name written by Fergus Redmond and Archibald Gunter.

In the film, Lillian Travers, a wealthy Northern woman about to be married, takes a magical seed which transforms its user into the opposite gender. Lillian's transformation into Lawrence Talbot has also been read as a transformation into a butch lesbian. This reading is bolstered by the later transformation of Lillian's fiancé into what appears to be an effemininate gay man.

The film is also known for its use of blackface antics; an aspect carefully dissected in Siobhan Somerville's "Queering the Color Line." Since its inclusion in Vito Russo's Celluloid Closet, the film has increasingly been seen as one of the earliest film representations of homosexuality in American culture.

[edit] Cast

• Edith Storey - Lillian Travers/Lawrence Talbot
• Sidney Drew - Dr. Frederick Cassadene
• Ethel Lloyd - Jane
• Grace Stevens - Constancia Oglethorpe
• Charles Kent - Major Horton
• Jane Morrow - Bessie Horton
• Ada Gifford - Stella Lovejoy
• Lillian Burns - Malvina
• Allan Campbell - Stockton Remington
• Cortland van Deusen - Charley Wilkes
• Frank O'Neil - Gustavus Duncan

[edit] External links

• A Florida Enchantment at the Internet Movie Database
• Plot summary, cast & crew biographies, and an online photo reconstruction of the film.