| The Maniac Cook | |
| Director: | D. W. Griffith |
| Producer: | Biograph Company New York City |
| Starring: | Anita Hendrie Harry Solter Marion Leonard |
| Cinematography: | G. "Billy" Bitzer[1] |
| Distributor: | Biograph Company |
| Released: | [2] |
| Runtime: | 8 minutes (partial reel), 533 feet |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | Silent with English intertitles |
The Maniac Cook is a 1909 American silent thriller film produced by the Biograph Company of New York, directed by D. W. Griffith, and starring Anita Hendrie in the title role. Principal cast members also include Harry Solter and Marion Leonard.
Footage from this short survives in several formats and is preserved among the holdings of the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.[3]
In a 1985 published catalog of early silent films in its collection, the Library of Congress summarizes this Biograph short as a disturbing tale of a "mentally deranged cook" who "removes [her employers'] infant from its crib, and decides on a diabolical plot of putting the baby in the oven so that when the family lights the stove, they will be responsible for the baby's death."[3]
A more detailed contemporary description of the film's storyline is also provided in the January 2, 1909 issue of the New York trade publication The Film Index:
The screenplay was produced at Biograph's main studio in New York City, which in 1908 was located inside a large renovated brownstone mansion in Manhattan at 11 East 14th Street.[4] The film was one of many shorts that D. W. Griffith managed during his first year as a director for Biograph. His cinematographer on the project, G. W. "Billy" Bitzer, shot the drama over two dayson November 25 and 27, 1908on interior sets at the Manhattan studio.[4]
Remarks about the film published in 1909 newspapers and trade journals are generally quite brief and with few exceptions are connected to advertisements for the Biograph release and to its promotion at various theaters throughout the United States. In Utah, for example, the newspaper The Salt Lake Herald announces in its January 10, 1909 issue that The Maniac Cook is among a slate of "high class" motion pictures being presented at the Lyric Theatre and assures prospective ticket-buyers that the photoplay "causes real thrills".[6] One film reviewer, however, in the January 9, 1909 issue of the New York trade journal The Moving Picture World does provide a fairly lengthy assessment of the thriller, one that touches on a series of elements pertaining to what the reviewer calls a "masterpiece", including comments about the short's cinematography, the believability of Anita Hendrie's acting style in the picture, as well as the emotional responses that some of its scenes evoked from theater audiences:
A partial film negative and positive of The Maniac Cook survive in the Library of Congress (LC), which holds a 206-foot paper roll of contact prints produced directly frame-by-frame from the comedy's original 35mm master negative.[3] Submitted by Biograph to the United States government in December 1908, shortly before the film's release, the roll is part of the original documentation required by federal authorities for motion picture companies in their applications to obtain copyright protection for their productions.[7] While the LC's paper roll of the film is certainly not projectable, a negative copy of the roll's paper images was made and transferred onto modern polyester-based safety film stock. From that negative footage a positive print could then be processed for screening. All of these copies were made as part of a preservation project carried out during the 1950s and early 1960s by Kemp R. Niver and other LC staff, who restored more than 3,000 early paper rolls of film images from the library's collection in order to create safety-stock copies.[7]