Released two years after D.W. Griffiths’ The Birth of a Nation, the silent film A Mormon Maid has come under criticism in modern times. Its anti-Mormon storyline sought to capitalize on Birth’s success by inflaming the then-prevailing anti-Mormon sentiment and linking the Ku Klux Klan to the Mormon Danites, a vigilante group depicted in hoods and gowns in the film.

The film was produced by Cecil B. deMille, credited as ‘Director General’ of Famous Players-Lasky (which would become Paramount Pictures), directed by Robert Z. Leonard and written by Charles Sarver and Paul West, based on the latter’s story. It starred Mae Murray, Edythe Chapman, Noah Beery, Sr., Hobart Bosworth and Frank Borzage.

The original story was titled “The Deliverance,” and the film was cut down from eight reels to five before release. Jesse L. Lasky changed the release date of the film several times. It was then released as a ‘states rights’ release, probably because of the outcry from the Mormon Church. However, the Lasky name is retained, even on the intertitles. (States’ rights-released films were a way of selling films by territory by producers to local salesmen nationwide. The producers retained copyright but only made money on the initial sale. The films were sold by length: ten cents per linear foot of film.)

The film opens with a shot of the cover of a fictional book, “The Mormon Pioneers,” which tells the story of the Mormon migration to Utah in 1848. A young Mormon, Tom (Borzage), who is part of the migratory caravans, comes across the Hogue family who lives in a backwater — John (Bosworth), his wife Nancy (Chapman) and their teenage daughter Dora (Murray) — and warns them of an imminent attack by Indians. They refuse to move. When the “Menace of the Plains” does attack their homestead, Tom alerts the Mormons who rescue the Hogues. He falls in love with Dora; his affection is returned by her. The family, who has lost everything in the attack, moves with the Mormons to Salt Lake City.

After a couple of years, the Mormon elders feel that the father has too much influence in the community and force him to take a second wife, insisting that that is the only way to save his daughter from polygamy. Nancy commits suicide out of shame. Dora is captured by the Avenging Angels, the enforcers of the Mormon Church, and is forced to agree to become the sixth wife of the Apostle. The Avenging Angels or Danites are, according to the intertitles, “400 oath-bound fanatics” dressed in hoods and gowns “emblazoned by the “All-Seeing Eye” of Mormonism.” The intertitles add, “This costume, but with a cross substituted for the ‘Eye,’ was later adopted by the Ku Klux Klan.”

(There was a fraternal organization called the Danites that was founded by Mormons in 1838 in Missouri but was apparently later disavowed by the Mormon Church for its violence, and no evidence of their existence beyond 1938 is found. But the group was used for anti-Mormon propaganda purposes till Utah became a state.)

Dora manages to save herself from the marriage by avowing she isn’t a virgin, which is a requirement for a bride according to Mormon rules. The sinister Elder (Beery, Jr.) is still determined to have her, and Dora manages to kill him in a shootout, helped by her injured father who managed to disguise himself in the robes of an Avenging Angel. She leaves Salt Lake City with her father and Tom who has renounced the Mormons, into, “a land of golden promise”, according to the intertitles.

Charles Rosher, one of the premier cinematographers of the period, achieves beautifully lit, composed and filmed scenes, especially those of the frontier and the scenes of conflict. This was no low-budget film, and a lot of resources were spent on production values and assembling a top-flight cast.

Murray, who had made her onscreen debut the previous year, and was to become a major star for Universal, was known as ‘the Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips.’ She twice acted opposite Rudolf Valentino in The Delicious Little Devil and Big Little Person in 1919. She would marry director Leonard in 1918, one of her four husbands. Her acting in Maid is overwrought and declamatory, according to the style of the leading ladies of the era, who tended to languish and wring their hands when not emoting histrionically or gesticulating wildly.

Borzage would go on to have a very successful directorial career. He would win two Oscars for Best Director, including the very first one in 1929 for 7^th Heaven with Janet Gaynor. Bosworth was already a director, producer and writer by the time he performed in Maid but focused on acting after his production company folded for health reasons.

The film was subject to the approval of the Chicago Board of Censors which cut two of its intertitles according to the trade paper Exhibitor’s Herald of September 8, 1917. One was “I am not a __.” Presumably, the blank was for the word ‘virgin.’ The other one was “You have scoffed at our faith – now you will pay.”

A Mormon Maid was also one of the most advertised films of the day. On March 2, 1917, Moving Picture World declared the film “The Trade Sensation of the Year! A Stupendous Thrilling Expose of a Hidden Chapter of American Life.” An ad in Variety of April 27, 1917, shows a black and white drawing of the Park Theater in New York with a crowd in front of it. A hand points to the drawing and the text reads: “That Crowd is Clamoring for Admission to the Park Theater, New York to see the first photodrama ever written with Mormonism as a base.” Only Mae Murray is credited in small type (along with the sales agents); most of the ad is taken over by the title.

Audiences received the film extremely well and it was still showing three years after its release, fueling the anti-Mormon attitudes of the time despite the Mormon church’s efforts to suppress it. Anti-Mormon organizations, the foremost being the National Reform Association, sprang up railing against the evils of polygamy and the “Mormon Menace.” Today, the film is largely forgotten, all the focus on The Birth of a Nation for racist storytelling.

A Mormon Maid was restored with funding by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association in partnership with The Film Foundation.