You know, when you picture going to the movies
in, say, 1911, you probably imagine something
incredibly quaint. Oh, definitely. Like sitting
in a cramped, stuffy Nickelodeon theater. Right.
Maybe smelling the ozone from the projector,
watching a really scratchy, flickering black
and white reel of, I don't know, a train pulling
into a station. Or perhaps someone comically
slipping on a banana peel while a ragtime piano
just hammers away in the corner. Exactly. You
expect the experience to be a little slow. visually
simplistic, and above all, you know, innocent.
Right. Totally tame by today's standards. Well,
what if I told you that in 1911, audiences were
actually lining up around the block for a scandalous
international thriller? Oh, a thriller in 1911.
Oh, yeah. A film packed with kidnapping, drug
-induced hypnosis, high -stakes harbor patrol
chases, secret trap doors, and on top of all
that, a massive global censorship battle. Wow.
That completely shatters that illusion of the
innocent silent era, doesn't it? It really does.
So welcome to today's deep dive. Today, we are
opening up the archives on a fascinating piece
of cinematic history for you. We are looking
at the Wikipedia article on the 1911 Danish silent
drama film, A Victim of the Mormons. War, as
it was known in its native Denmark, Mormons offer.
Right. We are going to explore how a single highly
controversial 51 minutes silent film became an
absolute international sensation. And how it
weaponized what we now call the Stray Sand effect.
decades before that term even existed, plus how
it essentially single -handedly launched a decade
-long propaganda genre in American cinema. Yeah,
and before we dive into the details of this story,
I think it is crucial to establish some ground
rules for you listening right now. Absolutely.
We are exploring this historical source material
purely objectively as an artifact of early cinema.
We are absolutely not endorsing or validating
the anti -Mormon sentiments or the religious
viewpoints presented in the film. Of course not.
Rather, our goal is to examine how this specific
piece of media was constructed, why it was made,
and how it sparked a massive cultural and censorship
battle back in 1911. I really appreciate that
disclaimer because I mean looking at the plot
of this thing it's hard to stay purely academic.
It is wild. It reads like a modern daytime soap
opera crossed with like a Jason Bourne movie.
Yeah. The global uproar doesn't even make sense
until you realize what was actually playing out
on the screen. So, okay, let's unpack this plot.
Let's do it. We start at a luxurious seaside
hotel in Denmark, right? Yes. The film stars
Claire Pontopadan as Florence Grange. Though,
if you were watching the original Danish release,
her character was actually named Nina Graham.
Okay. Got it. Florence is this attractive, young
Danish woman vacationing at the seaside resort
with her father, her brother George, and her
fiance Leslie. Right. And right away, the film
sets up a very classic, very recognizable...
melodramatic dynamic. Florence clearly cares
for Leslie, but he's distracted. He's sort of
ignoring her, right? Exactly. He is neglecting
her, completely taking her for granted. Which,
as we know, leaves the door wide open for a charming
stranger to walk into the hotel restaurant. Exactly.
One evening, Florence's brother introduces the
family to a young American named Andrew Larson.
Played by Voldemort Solander. Yes. Andrew is
a Mormon priest, and he is immediately drawn
to Florence. He hands her an admission card to
a meeting. And because her fiance is ignoring
her, Florence just starts spending a ton of time
with this strangely fascinating America. Oh,
who's suddenly giving her all this attention.
Right. And this is where the movie takes a hard
left turn from a quaint romantic drama into a
full -blown psychological thriller. It really
escalates quickly. Andrew doesn't just woo her
with nice words. The plot explicitly states he
uses indoctrination and literally hypnosis to
lure Florence away and convince her to run off
to Utah with him. Yeah, hypnosis. Which makes
me wonder, how on earth did they depict hypnosis
in a 1911 silent film? Was it just like... intense
staring into the camera? Basically, yes. A lot
of intense staring, dramatic posturing, and highly
exaggerated physical acting to convey that Florence
was losing her own free will. The film goes out
of its way to claim she acts partly out of passion,
but heavily under the influence of this hypnotic
trance. Right. So she sneaks away to meet Andrew
at the railway station. Meanwhile... Her father
finds a note from Andrew left in her room and
realizes what's happening. So the brother and
the fiance call the police. Who then alert the
harbor patrol. Oh wait, a high stakes harbor
patrol chase in 1911. Yep. How are they even
filming that with those massive, stationary early
cameras? I'm imagining it's incredibly difficult
to coordinate action sequences on moving boats.
Oh, it was. Early cinema was just barely starting
to learn the grammar of cross -cutting and chase
sequences. Right, the editing techniques were
so new. Exactly. So you would have a lot of wide,
static shots of boats moving through the frame
combined with just frantic acting on the docks.
But the narrative mechanics of the chase are
surprisingly modern. How so? Well, Andrew realizes
the authorities are closing in. So with the help
of an accomplice, he actually drugs Florence
to keep her compliant. Yeah. Then they find another
couple walking near the docks and completely
swap hats and coats with them to act as decoys.
Which is brilliant for a villain. I mean, that's
a classic trope. It really is. The Harper patrol
ends up detaining the innocent couple wearing
Florence's clothes. And by the time Florence's
brother and fiance arrive at the docks to rescue
her and unravel the decoy trick, it's too late.
Andrew and Florence are already on a steamship
heading for America. But the action doesn't stop
once they are on the boat either. Florence wakes
up, the hypnosis or the drugs wear off, and she
has a sudden change of heart. She demands to
go home. And Andrew lies and assures her that
they will. Meanwhile, back on land, the police
manage to send a telegraph to the ship to warn
the captain about the kidnapping. But Andrew
intercepts it. Yes. He physically overpowers
the ship's telegraph operator before the plot
can be exposed. It's just nonstop action. Hold
on. I'm trying to picture the geography here.
He gets her all the way across the Atlantic,
off the boat, onto a train, and all the way to
Salt Lake City, Utah, and nobody stops them.
Well that's the magic of silent film editing.
The story needs them in Utah for the climax,
so poof, to Utah they go. Fast travel unlocked.
Exactly. Andrew gets Florence to Salt Lake City
and locks her in a bedroom. Florence actually
manages to win the sympathy of Andrew's first
wife. Who is played by Emily Sanam, I believe.
Right. But a desperate escape attempt fails.
Eventually, Florence's brother and fiance arrive
in Utah to track them down. They confront Andrew
at his house. And Andrew just plays dumb, right?
He sends the brother and the fiance off on a
wild goose chase elsewhere in the city. And while
they're gone, Andrew takes Florence and hides
her in a dark... dank cellar. But not just any
cellar. A cellar that can only be accessed by
a secret trapdoor. He just happened to install
a secret trapdoor in his Utah home. It is the
absolute height of pulp fiction. It's so good.
The brother and fiancee realize they've been
tricked, they burst back into the house, but
they can't find her anywhere. Andrew is standing
there pleading his absolute innocence. But then,
by pure cinematic look, Florence discovers a
hidden button inside the cellar. She presses
it, the secret trapdoor swings open, and her
fiancé frees her. But Andrew still isn't done.
No, he pulls a pistol, tries to shoot Florence,
the fiancé tackles him, there's a desperate thrashing
struggle for the gun, and Andrew accidentally
shoots himself and dies. Roll credits. I mean,
it is absolutely mind -blowing. We think of early
cinema as so tame, but they were giving audiences
hypnotic seduction, drug kidnappings, and trapdoor
shootouts. It was a master class in melodrama.
But to understand why this film exists and why
it was so extreme, we have to look behind the
camera. Right, the studio motivations. It's baffling
to think that a Danish studio in 1911 would even
care about an American religion headquartered
in Utah. Why target them? Well, because they
weren't really targeting a religion, were they?
They were targeting a highly lucrative formula.
Exactly. Let's look at what Nordiskfilm, the
studio behind this, was doing just a year prior.
Nordiskfilm was a major Danish studio. And by
1911, they had figured out a very specific, very
profitable genre. It was known at the time as
the white slavery film. Oh, boy. That sounds
exactly like what it is, doesn't it? Unfortunately,
yes. These were films that portrayed young, naive,
usually European women who were kidnapped, held
captive, and placed in imminent danger of forced
prostitution or sexual assault. Yikes. Nordisk
had already produced a string of massive hits
utilizing this exact template. In 1907, they
released The White Slave Girl. In 1910, they
released The White Slave Trade. And then naturally,
because it made so much money, the sequel, The
White Slave Trade's Last Victim. Now, obviously,
a film studio in 1911 couldn't just come out
and put on a poster, hey, we're making these
movies because audiences love watching sensationalized
exploitation and women in compromising positions.
No, absolutely not. They needed cover. They needed
an official public stance to justify putting
this on screen. And they found one. Nordisk Film
officially stated that these films were purely
educational. They claimed very seriously to the
press that they were making these movies to expose
the social dangers of white slavery and to warn
young women about the perils of traveling alone
or trusting strangers. Isn't claiming you're
making this purely for social awareness the 1911
equivalent of saying I only read it for the articles.
Pretty much. I mean, come on. They knew exactly
what they were doing. They were selling tickets
to a moral panic. What's fascinating here is
how early cinema established this psychological
pattern for its audience. They quickly learned
how to mask profitable exploitation behind a
veneer of moral instruction. Right, to give people
an excuse to watch it. Exactly. If a film was
just pure sleaze, polite society would shun it.
But if it was framed as a necessary warning,
it gave the audience permission to watch something
scandalous without feeling guilty. That makes
a lot of sense. And because those previous films
were so incredibly popular, Nordisk decided to
take that formula and elevate it. A victim of
the Mormons was greenlit to be their next big
prestige project. And when you say prestige,
it's hard for us today to grasp what that meant
in 1911. Today, you know, prestige project is
a $200 million blockbuster. look like for Nordisk
film back then? It meant throwing unprecedented
resources at it. The director, August Blum, was
the studio's bright new talent, and he had a
real flair for this kind of intense melodrama,
but the biggest resource they committed was time.
In 1911, films were generally quite short, usually
one reel, maybe lasting 10 to 15 minutes. Really
short. Right. Audiences weren't used to sitting
for long narratives, and film stock was incredibly
expensive. But Nordisk shot a video victim of
the Mormons on three reels. It ran 3 ,200 feet
long, which translates to about 51 and a half
minutes of screen time. Yes, that made it one
of the longest Danish films of its era. This
was the 1911 equivalent of James Cameron releasing
a three and a half hour 3D epic today. It was
a massive technological and financial risk. It
absolutely was. And to secure that investment,
they brought in the biggest prestige factor possible,
the casting. Specifically, the casting of Voldemort
Cylinder as the villain. Andrew Larson. Someter
is such an interesting figure. When he was cast
in this film, it was only his third movie for
Nordisk film. But he had just achieved international
recognition earlier that year in a film called
At the Prison Gates. He was a sensation. He was
already Nordisk's highest paid actor. Right,
think of him as the Leonardo DiCaprio of 1911
Denmark. He was the ultimate heartthrob. Which
brings up a huge question for me. If you have
the absolute biggest, highest paid, most handsome
leading man in your studio, Why put him in the
terrifying villain role? It's counterintuitive.
Yeah. Usually you'd cast him as the heroic fiance
coming to save the day. Yeah. How does casting
your heartthrob as the bad guy change the audience's
experience? It was a brilliant, albeit very cynical,
psychological play by the director, August Blum.
By casting their biggest snar, their most charismatic
leading man, as the Maniculator, it makes the
seduction of Florence entirely believable to
the audience. Oh, that's clever. Samantha brings
this terrifying charm to the role. The audience
is naturally drawn to him because he's a movie
star, just as Florence is drawn to him in the
story. So it creates this uncomfortable cognitive
dissonance. Exactly. You like him, but he is
doing horrible things, which makes the betrayal
and the kidnapping feel so much more visceral
and shocking. It totally anchors the movie. Yeah.
And his real life story is just incredibly tragic,
isn't it? Yes. Surrender went on to make 83 films
over the next six years. Wait, 83 films in six
years? He was an absolute workhorse and he remained
the highest paid Danish actor until 1917 when
he tragically committed suicide at the age of
just 32. That is so sad. But in 1911 he was at
the very beginning of this meteoric rise and
his star power was a massive driver of the Thurms
international hit status. So you take a massive
heartthrob star You give him an exploitative,
sensational plot wrapped in a fake moral warning,
and you back it with a massive 51 -minute runtime.
You have the perfect storm. Now you just need
an aggressive marketing campaign to light the
match. And they had one. The premiere was set
for October 10, 1911 at the Panopticon Theater
in Copenhagen, followed just a week later by
a release in London. And Nordisk Film did not
hold back on the advertising. They leaned right
into the controversy. Immediately. They distributed
these highly sensational programs to theaters
with taglines screaming, extraordinary exposure
of a terrible doctrine. Wow. And they bragged
in the advertising copy saying, this exciting
and effective modern drama, which reveals the
Latter Day Saints ruthless propaganda, is one
of film's great international successes. And
the trade papers, which at the time were essentially
just hype machines designed to convince local
theater owners to buy the film reels they bought
right into it. Of course they did. Magazines
like Bioscope wrote, This great winner creates
a record booking. And the American trade paper
Motion Picture News declared it has no equal
as a moneymaker. They were practically foaming
at the mouth over the potential ticket sales.
But obviously you can't release a movie. loudly
declaring it's an exposure of a terrible doctrine
without the people you're attacking noticing.
The Latter -day Saints church in Europe and America
saw this marketing campaign and immediately pushed
back. The public condemnation was swift. The
LDS church presidency formally complained to
the American National Board of censorship. What
was that board exactly? It was a relatively new,
unofficial body at the time, trying to legitimize
the film industry by policing its morals. Oh,
okay. The church demanded that all references
to Mormonism be completely removed from the title
and the content of the film before it could be
shown in America. Here's where it gets really
interesting. This is a textbook case of the Streisand
effect. Oh, absolutely. Decades before Barbara
Streisand ever took a photo of her house on the
coast. By going to the censorship board and trying
to ban the movie, the church inadvertently handed
Nordisk Film the greatest marketing campaign
they could have ever asked for. Every newspaper
wanted to cover the attempted ban. If we connect
this to the bigger picture, you have to look
at the mechanics of controversy. When the National
Board of Censorship ultimately failed to act
and the film was released completely unchanged,
the attempted ban became the actual story. The
studio capitalized on it perfectly. They effectively
told the public, Come see the shocking movie
that powerful institutions tried to stop you
from seeing. It even reached the highest levels
of state government. The governor of Utah at
the time, William Spry, got involved. He was
furious. He publicly blasted the Danish filmmakers,
saying they were only exceeded in their perversion
of the truth by their absurdity. Spry actually
tried to use his executive power to ban the film
from being shown in the state of Utah. And that
effort failed as well. It did. The film was shown
without any alterations in Utah theaters that
very same year. The controversy generated so
much curiosity that theaters just couldn't resist
booking it. Money talks. I can't even imagine
the tense atmosphere inside a Utah theater in
1911 playing that movie while the governor was
actively trying to shut it down. But the massive
financial success of this controversy set a very
clear, very dangerous message to every other
film studio around the world. Which it was. Anti
-Mormon panic sells tickets. It really opened
the floodgates. By the time A Victim of the Mormons
had its wide release in the United States in
February of 1912, it had already spawned a whole
genre. Rival Studios saw the box office returns
from Nordisk and immediately started rushing
their own copycat films into production to catch
in on the trend. We're talking major, legitimate
studios here. The French studio Pathé Frères
churned out movies titled Marriage or Death and
Mountain Meadows Massacre. And American Studios
jumped in too, right? Yep. The American Film
Manufacturing Company released the Mormon, and
the Sullig Polyscope Company in Chicago released
the Danites. For the next decade, this became
a reliable, flourishing subgenre of propaganda
in early cinema. You had countless films portraying
Mormon villains as white slavers, ruthless terrorists,
and mesmerizing Svengales. The tropes really
solidified. Wait, Svengales meaning these sort
of mystical, controlling manipulators who could
somehow strip away a woman's free will just by
looking at her. Exactly. The term comes from
an 1894 novel, but early cinema adopted it as
a visual shorthand. It became a standardized
cinematic trope for villainy, all tracing back
to the financial success of August Bloom and
Waldemar Salander's film. It created a template
for how to demonize a group on screen for profit.
It really did. But here is perhaps the wildest
twist in this entire story. This film, a victim
of the Mormons, which was a massive three real
epic running over 50 minutes. Most of it is gone.
Sadly, yes. Out of the original 51 minutes of
35 millimeter film stock, only about 30 minutes
have been recovered and preserved today. Yes.
Like so many films from the silent era, it is
partially lost to history. Why is that? Well,
early film stock was made of nitrate, which is
not only highly flammable, but also degrades
into jelly over time if not stored perfectly.
Wow. Into jelly. Yeah. The fact that even 30
minutes survive is a minor miracle. That surviving
footage has been transferred to 16 millimeter
film and videotape to prevent any further decay.
But the irony is where this surviving footage
is actually kept. If you want to find a copy
of this anti -Mormon propaganda film, you know
where it is. Where? It is safely on file in the
LDS Church archives in Salt Lake City. Really?
Hold on, let me get this straight. The organization
that begged the censorship boards to destroy
this film The organization whose governor tried
to ban it from theaters is now the one spending
resources to preserve its surviving footage.
This raises an important question about the role
of archives and the profound philosophical weight
of preserving history. Right, because why save
it? It would be incredibly easy for an institution
to let a piece of offensive propaganda simply
rot away, especially when they were the original
targets of it. Why save the weapon used against
you? Yeah, exactly. But preserving it acknowledges
the reality of what happened. Erasing the evidence
of a prejudice doesn't erase the prejudice itself.
It just deprives future generations of the ability
to study how that smear campaign was constructed.
That makes total sense. You cannot study the
history of early 20th century censorship. or
the development of propaganda on film without
artifacts exactly like this one. It really is
a profound shift in perspective. From trying
to destroy the celluloid in 1911 to carefully
climate -controlling it a century later, it takes
a lot of institutional maturity to recognize
the historical value of something that was designed
to hurt you. It shows an understanding that history
requires a complete record, even the ugly parts.
It is an incredible journey. We started with
a cynical cash grab by a Danish film studio looking
to capitalize on a deeply exploitative white
slavery trend. They threw unprecedented money
at the runtime. Cast their biggest heartthrob
to mess with the audience's psychology. Concocted
a ridiculous plot with secret trapdoors and hypnosis.
And slapped a fake educational warning on the
poster to make it socially acceptable. And from
there, it spiraled into a global censorship battle
that completely backfired, inadvertently sparking
an entire decade of American propaganda films.
So what does this all mean for you listening
today? I think it proves that the mechanics of
sensationalism, moral panic, and clickbait are
absolutely not products of the internet age.
We tend to think of viral outrage as something
born from social media algorithms. Oh, totally.
But Nordisk Film was perfecting the exact same
formula in 1911 in silent black and white cinema.
They knew that fear, scandal, and the lure of
forbidden media were the absolute fastest ways
to capture public attention and open their wallets.
Human nature hasn't changed just The delivery
method, which leads us with a fascinating thought
to chew on. What's that? Think about the media
today that institutions are actively trying to
ban or suppress. The viral videos, the controversial
documentaries, the censored posts, the things
deemed too dangerous for the public to see. A
century from now, which of today's dangerous
pieces of media will be carefully preserved and
studied in the climate -controlled archives of
the very institutions that originally tried to
destroy them? That is a great question. Thank
you so much for joining us on this deep dive.
Stay insanely curious, and we'll catch you next
time.