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’Twas the Night Before Christmas
(1914) United States of America
B&W : Split-reel
Directed by Ashley Miller
Cast: Harry Eytinge (Harry B. Eytinge) [Santa Claus], Andy Clark [the esquimo], Eldean Steuart [one of the children], Maurice Steuart [one of the children], Loel Steuart [one of the children], Hubert Dawley [one of the children], Janet Dawley [one of the children]
Thomas A. Edison, Incorporated, production; distributed by The General Film Company, Incorporated. / Scenario by John H. Collins, from a story by Annie H. Donnell. / Released 23 December 1914; in a split-reel with The Tip of the Dark Continent: Cape Town, South Africa and Its Vicinity (1914). / Standard 35mm spherical 1.33:1 format.
Drama: Fantasy.
Synopsis: [?] [From The Moving Picture World]? In his workshop, Santa Claus, helped by gnomes is packing toys into great sacks with winch he loads his sleigh. Wearied by his love toil, he mounts the sleigh, and the deer whisk him over the snow fields to the roof of the cottage. He descends the chimney, and fills with toys a pair of stockings, extra long, hanging near the fireplace. As he mounts the flue a wee lad steals into the room, looks up the chimney at the departing Santa and joyously clambers after him. The boy reaches the roof at the moment the sleigh starts, and perches behind it. He notes every house where Santa lavished gifts, and heedless of the nipping night air, stays lodged behind the sleigh, until Santa returns to his toy shop. Gazing through the window, the child sees Santa drowsily take off his wet shoes and stockings, hang the latter near the fire to dry, and go to his bedroom where the Sandman waits for him. The lad enters, looks at the empty stockings, and grieving at the thought that big-hearted Santa had not kept a gift for himself, determined to repay his generosity. The lad is borne on the wings of the night to his home, where he picks out a dainty gift, and flies through the crisp air to an American nursery, wherein three children are asleep. He rouses them, tells them how Santa Claus has no Christmas gift, and the children, moved to pity, select their most cherished belonging, and go with the lad out into the night to far-off Germany, where they enlist two more tiny recruits for the journey. Before long they gather companions from Italy, Spain, Holland, from all countries, even from the land of the Midnight Sun, and they all skim through the air to Santa’s home, and swarm into his toy shop where, in great glee, they hurry and fill his stockings with their gifts and heap presents by the fire. Santa, awakened by all the commotion, comes in upon his little well-wishers and gleams at the bulging stockings and the sight of offerings on the floor. The children swarm around him and climb all over him, and Santa feels that, indeed, it is a Merry Christmas.
Survival status: (unknown)
Current rights holder: Public domain [USA].
Keywords: Christmas
Listing updated: 5 October 2023.
References: Everson-American p. 34 : Website-IMDb.
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