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Pauline Bush and Lon Chaney (forward right).
Photograph: Silent Era image collection.
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Discord and Harmony
(1914) United States of America
B&W : Three reels
Directed by Allan Dwan
Cast: Murdock MacQuarrie [Old Felix, the composer], Pauline Bush [the girl], Allan Forrest [the artist], James Neill [the symphony conductor], Lon Chaney [Lon, the sculptor], John Burton
The Universal Film Manufacturing Company, Incorporated, production; distributed by The Universal Film Manufacturing Company, Incorporated [Gold Seal]. / Scenario by Arthur Rosson. / Released 17 March 1914. / Standard 35mm spherical 1.33:1 format.
Drama.
Synopsis: [?] [From The Moving Picture World]? Joy reigns in a colony of struggling artists because Old Felix, a composer, has at last sold one of his symphonies. The night of its initial hearing at the grand opera house the members of the colony turn out en masse. Too poor for orchestra seats, they gather in the gallery around the old composer. The old composer is happy almost to tears, and when the last note has died away there is a cry for the composer. Felix attempts to utter a few words of thanks, but is smothered with flowers. At his studio his friends have prepared for his welcome, and it is upon his arrival there that be feels the happiness which comes of success. However, at the other end of the hall another different drama is being enacted. A girl sits beside her stricken mother, and as the merriment in the studio reaches its height, the soul of the mother departs from the body. After all his friends have left the disconsolate girl seeks the help of Felix. The old musician is touched and all of his flowers, tributes to his success, he carries into the room of death and lends the girl as much financial assistance as she needs. The following day Felix adopts the girl as his ward. Lon, a sculptor, is impressed by her simplicity and beauty, and falls in love with her. Forrest, an artist, a malapert young man, patronizes the girl, and is repulsed in his advances. Felix puts up the money for Lon to go to Europe and study, and Lon, as a means of insuring the girl to himself when he returns, marries her secretly, but with Felix’s consent. Forrest overhears when Lon and the girl are discussing their future happiness, and being ignorant of their marriage, he takes a jealous pleasure in the thought that all is not proper. He circulates gossip to the girl’s discredit, and finally on the eve of Lon’s departure, he convinces Felix’s friends that he is right. The old musician is at work on a second symphony, and is utterly oblivious to what is going on; he scarcely notices that he is deserted by his friends. The friends hold a council, and decide to tell Felix the kind of woman he is harboring. Old Felix, after fully grasping what they mean, drives them from his studio. However, he is rendered more feeble by the reaction of his violent emotions and the contemplation of the foul suspicions which have separated him from his old friends. Thus he labors with feverish haste to complete his last symphony. But work and worry and forgotten favors are too much for the old man. His mind begins to wander. He staggers to his bedroom and dies. The girl finds him there, and carries the message of his death to his old friends. They congregate around his bedside, and that his soul may hear and forgive them, they play his last symphony. Lon, the sculptor, has returned from Europe, famous, and while the party of friends are yet beside the death-bed, he enters and greets the girl as his wife. The friends understand the injustice of their treatment of Old Felix, and again gather around his bed.
Survival status: The film is presumed lost.
Current rights holder: Public domain [USA].
Listing updated: 19 May 2020.
References: Spehr-American p. 100; Weaver-Twenty p. 75 : Website-IMDb.
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