File:1911 Thanhouser (film).jpg

{en} Only in the Way [1] (USA, 1911), produced by Thanhouser Company, starring Marie Eline (the little girl). <silent>

A crippled little girl lives at home with her parents and her grandmother. She loves her grandmother deeply, but her parents can't get along with the old woman, and the girl is torn between both sides.

One of the early Thanhouser vehicles built around Marie Eline, the company's celebrated "Thanhouser Kid." The story centers on a little girl whose emotional identification with her grandmother is affected by the troubled relationship between her parents and grandmother. Eline's role is explicitly central to the drama, and the surviving film provides particularly valuable evidence for the emergence of the child performer as a recognizable screen personality. Thanhouser's own preservation materials describe Eline as one of the few players to receive screen credit at this early date. <EXTANT; online YES; music YES>