The Broken Doll

• 1910

• Watchlist

D.W. Griffith took his entourage to Coytesville, New Jersey and Cuddebackville, New York to film the Biograph one-reel melodrama The Broken Doll. Little Gladys Egan stars as an Indian girl who, after suffering a lifetime of abuse and neglect at the hands of her tribe, experiences kindness for the first time in her life when a white girl gives her a doll as a gift. While this is going on, a brutish white adult kills an Indian, leading to a tribal war council. When the Indian child returns to her tribe, her doll is contemptuously snatched from her hands by an Indian brave, who tosses the toy into a deep gorge. Solemnly, the Indian girl buries her broken doll in traditional tribal fashion. As she hears the war whoops of her tribesmen, the girl realizes that her little white friend is in danger, and she rushes off to warn the settlers of imminent attack. Fatally wounded in the climactic battle, the Indian child uses her last ounce of strength to drag herself back to her beloved doll's grave.