A Florida Enchantment

Infobox Film
name = A Florida Enchantment


caption = DVD cover
director = Sidney Drew
producer = Sidney Drew
writer = Marguerite Bertsch
Eugene Mullin
starring = Edith Storey
Sidney Drew
Ethel Lloyd
cinematography = Robert A. Stuart
distributor = Vitagraph
released = 1914
runtime = 63 minutes
(at 20 fps)
country = USA
language = Silent film
English intertitles
preceded_by = A Horseshoe for Luck
followed_by = The Royal Wild West
imdb_id = 0003973

"A Florida Enchantment" is a 1914 Vitagraph silent film directed by and starring Sidney Drew. The film is based on the 1891 novel and 1896 play (now lost) of the same name written by Fergus Redmond and Archibald Gunter.

In the film, Lillian Travers, a wealthy Northern woman about to be married, takes a magical seed which transforms its user into the opposite gender. Lillian's transformation into Lawrence Talbot has also been read as a transformation into a butch lesbian. This reading is bolstered by the later transformation of Lillian's fiancé into what appears to be an effemininate gay man.

The film is also known for its use of blackface antics; an aspect carefully dissected in Siobhan Somerville's "Queering the Color Line." Since its inclusion in Vito Russo's Celluloid Closet, the film has increasingly been seen as one of the earliest film representations of homosexuality in American culture.

Cast

*Edith Storey - Lillian Travers/Lawrence Talbot
*Sidney Drew - Dr. Frederick Cassadene
*Ethel Lloyd - Jane
*Grace Stevens - Constancia Oglethorpe
*Charles Kent - Major Horton
*Jane Morrow - Bessie Horton
*Ada Gifford - Stella Lovejoy
*Lillian Burns - Malvina
*Allan Campbell - Stockton Remington
*Cortland van Deusen - Charley Wilkes
*Frank O'Neil - Gustavus Duncan

External links

*imdb title|id=0003973|title=A Florida Enchantment
* [http://afloridaenchantment.queersilents.com Plot summary, cast & crew biographies, and an online photo reconstruction of the film.]