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Mary Pickford (left), Ethel Grandin (center)
and Irvin Willat (right).
Photograph: Silent Era image collection.
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The Toss of a Coin
Also known as {The Toss of the Coin}
(1911) United States of America
B&W : One reel
Directed by Thomas H. Ince
Cast: Mary Pickford [Alice Barton, the farmer’s daughter], Irvin Willat [Dan Gardner], Ethel Grandin, Lottie Pickford
Independent Moving Pictures Company, Incorporated [IMP] production; distributed by Motion Picture Distributing & Sales Company. / Produced by Carl Laemmle. / Released 31 August 1911. / Standard 35mm spherical 1.33:1 format.
Comedy: Romance.
Synopsis: [?] [From The Moving Picture World]? Young Dan Gardner is down-and-out. Arrested as a tramp, he is thrown into jail and forced to associate with disreputable characters. He is released with but a single coin in his pocket. Arriving at a bridge, he gazes into the water and his thoughts turn to suicide. He reaches into his pocket, extracts the coin, and flips it: Heads he dies; tails he lives. Fate is against him and he is about to carry out the decree when Farmer Barton drives on the scene. He’s bound for the village to hire a man to assist him on his farm Dan is more than anxious to secure employment and accompanies the kind-hearted farmer home. Dan is fitted out with clothing and takes up his quarters in a detached cabin on the farm. Alice Barton, the farmer’s rosy-cheeked daughter, has attracted the attention of Ed White, the sheriff who released Dan from jail. Dan and Alice are thrown much into each other’s society and the new farm-hand loves her. Assisting her one day in the field where she has sprained her ankle, he realizes the truth, the difference in their stations, and resolves to leave the farm and go out into the world. He flips the coin and once more fate decrees that he should do that which is not satisfactory to him. The two thieves who were released from prison with him come to steal the farmer’s money, and while Dan is temporarily absent from his cabin, Alice comes to bring him some socks she has darned. Ed White, the jealous sheriff, notices the action and mistrusts the girl of being unduly intimate with Dan and informs her parents. Dan arrests the scoundrels, holding them up at gunpoint and turns them over to the sheriff, but he’s indignant at White’s accusation and about to leave the farm when his deed of heroism is made clear to the farmer, who has implicit faith in his daughter. Dan and Alice have a pretty little love scene and Dan is welcomed by the honest old farmer as his prospective son-in-law, to the sheriff’s discomfiture — hez’d sought to prejudice the old man against him. All ends happily for Dan and he has at last found a home among kind, loving friends.
Survival status: The film is presumed lost.
Current rights holder: Public domain [USA].
Listing updated: 15 November 2022.
References: Edmonds-BigU p. 28; Eyman-Pickford p. 326; Slide-Aspects p. 28 : Website-IMDb.
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