The Medicine Bottle is a 1909 American silent thriller film written and directed by D. W. Griffith, produced by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company in New York City, and starring Florence Lawrence, Adele DeGarde, and Marion Leonard. At its release in March 1909, the short was distributed to theaters on a "split reel", which was a single projection reel that accommodated more than one film. This drama shared its reel with another Biograph short directed by Griffith, the comedy Jones and His New Neighbors.
Original contact-print paper rolls of both motion pictures, as well as projectable safety-stock copies of them, are preserved in the Library of Congress.
Plot
The drama presents a suspenseful story involving two small, nearly identical bottles: one filled with a much-needed liquid medicine; the other, with a topical antiseptic solution that is a deadly poison if taken internally. After the bottles accidentally get switched, a young woman in a desperate race against time tries repeatedly to telephone her seven-year-old daughter Alice to prevent the girl from giving her sick grandmother the poison. A more detailed description of the plot follows, one published in the April 3, 1909 issue of the New York trade publication The Film Index:
Cast
Florence Lawrence as Mrs. Ross
Adele DeGarde as Alice, Mrs. Ross's daughter
Marion Leonard as Mrs. Parker
Linda Arvidson as telephone operator
Anita Hendrie as party guest
Dorothy West as party guest
David Miles as party guest
Herbert Yost as party guest
Mack Sennett as party guest
Jeanie MacPherson in unverified role (possibly a telephone operator) Min Johnson in unverified role (possibly another telephone operator)
Production
The screenplay for this short is credited to D. W. Griffith, who also directed the picture at Biograph's main studio, which in 1909 was located inside a large renovated brownstone mansion in New York City, in Manhattan, at 11 East 14th Street. The drama was filmed there on interior sets in four dayson February 3, 4, 10, and 16, 1909by Biograph cinematographer G. W. "Billy" Bitzer.
Sets and editing
Set composition, lighting, and filming The Medicine Bottle were collaborative efforts between Griffith and Bitzer, who used three interior sets or "units" at Biograph's Manhattan facility in making this production: a home interior where the bottle of poison and the bottle of medicine for the sick grandmother are accidentally switched; the parlor where the Mrs. Ross attends a party with friends and where she discovers the bottle mix-up; and finally the telephone exchange, where Mrs. Ross tries desperately to call her daughter and connect with young Alice through "a rather lazy crew of telephone operators." American film historian and university professor Joyce E. Jesionowski in her 1987 book Thinking in Pictures: Dramatic Structure in D. W. Griffith's Biograph Films regards The Medicine Bottle as a notable production in the director's early filmography, a release that illustrates his growing awareness of the power of film editing, in particular the intersplicing of close-ups to underscore visually important actions in a scene as well as the impact of quick back-and-forth cutting between sets to build dramatic tension for audiences. According to Jesionowski, the editing that Griffith employed in this short thriller redefined the need for actual extended physical space to represent distance on screen: Jesionowski's observations regarding Griffith's increased attention to camera setups and editing may explain why a short like The Medicine Bottle, which required no location shooting and had a final print length of only seven minutesa runtime even quite modest by 1909 production standardsrequired four days to shoot.