A Manly Man

Of the over 30 one-reelers Mary Pickford made in Cuba for Carl Laemmle’s Independent Motion Pictures Company, A Manly Man is one of few that survives today. Pickford plays Lola, a young Filipino woman who falls in love with Duncan (William E. Shay),a Caucasian man sent to her village on business. After Lola risks her life nursing his fever and saving him from a knife attack, Duncan marries her and resists the temptation to return to his American fiancée. Directed by Thomas Ince and co-starring Pickford’s first husband Owen Moore, A Manly Man was later reissued under the title His Gratitude (1914).