The Lonedale Operator

D. W. Griffith, Biograph, released 23 March 1911, scenario by Mack Sennett, Bitzer on camera. Blanche Sweet, fifteen, takes her father's telegraph key at a lonely depot; two tramps want the payroll, and she wires her engineer suitor while holding the office. More than a hundred shots cut the office, the tracks, and the train. MoMA restored camera-negative tinting (blue for night) and the original titles. The close-up that ends the ruse is a wrench, not a pistol.