Esmeralda*

Role: Esmeralda Rogers
Co-stars: Ida Waterman, Fuller Mellish, Arthur Hoops, William Buckley, Charles Waldron
Prod/Dist Co: Famous Players Film Company/Paramount Pictures
Director: James Kirkwood
Screenwriter: Frances Marion, based on the 1881 play by Frances Hodgson Burnett and William Gillette, adapted from the 1887 short story by Burnett
Cinematographer: Emmett A. Williams

Note:  Though reviews of the film were not overwhelmingly positive,  Esmeralda  was another smash hit for Mary; the Strand in New York reported “packed houses”and “standing-room only”shows. Sadly, the only remaining copy of the film decomposed due to improper storage in the 1950s and is now lost.

Original review from  Photoplay  (Nov. 1915):

Miss Pickford is enshrined in the hearts of all the people, not because she is the sweetest of the limpid non-entities, but because she is a young woman of powerful personality and extraordinary dramatic talent. Hers is the art which conceals itself. Such hen-yarn drama as ‘Esmeralda’ is as unworthy of criticism as it is unworthy of Mary Pickford.