The Toll of the Sea

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The Toll of the Sea

Directed by	Chester M. Franklin
Produced by	Herbert T. Kalmus
Written by	Frances Marion
Starring	Anna May Wong Kenneth Harlan Beatrice Bentley
Cinematography	J.A. Ball
Editing by	Hal C. Kern
Distributed by	Metro Pictures Corporation
Release date(s)	1922-11-26
Running time	53 min.
Language	English
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IMDb profile

The Toll of the Sea is a motion picture produced by the Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation, and released by Metro Pictures in 1922, featuring Anna May Wong in her first leading role. It was the seventh color feature,^[1] the second Technicolor feature, the first color feature made in Hollywood, and the first color feature anywhere that did not require a special projector to be shown. The original camera negative survives except for the final reel. In 1985 the UCLA Film and Television Archive preserved the film from the original 35 mm nitrate negative. Because modern film technology was used to create a color print instead of the original Technicolor Process 2, which involved cementing together two film strips base to base, the resulting image quality is likely better than the original prints appeared [1].

1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Background
4 Availability
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Plot

When young Lotus Flower sees an unconscious man floating in the water near the seashore, she quickly gets help for him. The man is Allen Carver, an American visiting China. Soon the two have fallen in love, and Carver promises to take her with him when he returns home. But Carver's friends discourage him from doing this, and he returns to the USA alone. By the time the two of them meet again, much has changed, and their reunion proves very trying for them both. [2]

[edit] Cast

Anna May Wong.... Lotus Flower
Kenneth Harlan.... Allen Carver
Beatrice Bentley.... Barbara 'Elsie' Carver
Priscilla Moran.... Little Allen (as Baby Moran)
Etta Lee.... Second Gossip
Ming Young.... First Gossip

[edit] Background

The Toll of the Sea was written by Frances Marion and directed by Chester M. Franklin, with the lead roles played by Anna May Wong and Kenneth Harlan. The plot was a variation of the Madame Butterfly story, set in China instead of Japan.

[edit] Availability

The restored version is available as one of the titles included in the 4-DVD box-set Treasures from American Film Archives, 50 Preserved Films [3].

[edit] References

^ Earlier color features: With Our King and Queen Through India (The Durbar at Delhi) (1912), The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1914), and Little Lord Fauntleroy (1914), all in Kinemacolor; The Gulf Between (1917), in Technicolor; Cupid Angling (1918), in Douglass Natural Color; and The Glorious Adventure (1921), in Prizma color.