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Crichton, an educated man who is the butler to Lord
Loam, secretly loves the lord's daughter, Lady Mary Lasenby, while the pleasant
scullery maid, Tweeny, loves Crichton. After Lord Loam's yacht wrecks, his
family and servants become stranded on a South Seas island. The lord
attempts to lead the others, but Crichton takes over when he fails.
After Crichton saves Lady Mary from a leopard
attack, she falls in love with him. He tells her a Babylonian legend in
which a Christian slave girl dies in a lion's den rather than abandon her
religion to become the concubine of the king. Just as Lady Mary is about
to marry Crichton, they are rescued.
In England, Lady Mary's love for Crichton remains
strong but, when Crichton sees that Lady Eileen Dun Craigie is made a social
outcast when she marries a chauffeur, he announces that he will marry Tweeny.
Afterward they go to America where birth does not always determine social
position.
Notes
The film is based on the play The Admirable Crichton by James M. Barrie
(London, November 4, 1902).
Elliott Dexter was originally slated to play
Crichton, but he suffered a nervous breakdown and did not take the role.
Some scenes were shot on the Santa Cruz Islands, California. According to
ETR, the film's length is 8,709 feet, while Wid's reports it as
8,860 feet. Major Ian Hay Beith worked with DeMille and Macpherson to help
make the atmosphere correctly British. According to modern sources, the
film editor was Anne Bauchens. According to an interview with Mitchell
Leisen, he designed costumes for only the Babylonian sequence. According
to an interview with James Wong Howe, he was the third assistant cameraman on
this film.
Many versions of this story have been made,
including: Shipwrecked, a three-reel 1913 Kalem film starring
Anna Q. Nilsson and Guy Coombs; The Admirable Crichton, a 1918
British production directed by G. B. Samuelson and starring Basil Gill; We're
Not Dressing, a 1934 Paramount musical directed by Norman Taurog and
starring
Bing Crosby and
Ethel Merman; and Paradise Lagoon (U.S. title), a 1957
British-American co-production directed by Lewis Gilbert and featuring Kenneth
More as Crichton.
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