THE CHEAT

1915, 58 mins. 35 mm print source: George Eastman House/International Museum of Photography.
Directed by Cecil B. DeMille. Written by Jeanie Mcpherson and Hector Turnbull. Produced by Jesse L. Lasky. Photographed by Alvin Wyckoff. Edited by Cecil B. DeMille. Art Direction by Wilfred Buckland. Principal Cast: Fannie Ward (as Edith Hardy), Jack Dean (Dick Hardy), Sessue Hayakawa (Haka Arakau), James Neill (Jones), Jack Yutaka Abbe (The valet), Dana Ong (District Attorney), Hazel Childers (Mrs. Reynolds), Arthur H. Williams (courtroom judge).
Production started: October 20, 1915. Production finished: November 10, 1915. Length: 4,243 feet (5 reels). Cost $17,311.29. Released: December 13, 1915. Gross: $137.364.87.


Program notes written by Robert S. Birchard for a Cecil B. DeMille retrospective at the American Museum of the Moving Image in 1989. ( Birchard's book Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood will be published in June 2004 by the University Press of Kentucky):

The Cheat has been admired for its lighting effects and the restrained telling of its lurid story-and these are indeed virtues. It has also been condemned for its racism and improbable melodrama-and these are decidedly faults. It was a tremendous box-office success, but it was not a project of special interest to DeMille. In fact, he had no use for scenarist Hector Turnbull, and his own records indicate that Jeanie Macpherson co-wrote-or perhaps rewrote-the script.

Fannie Ward, known as the "eternal flapper," was nearing forty when The Cheat was made. Her youthful appearance was said to be due to paraffin injected under her cheeks, which kept her skin tight and smooth, but which tended to melt under hot lights, necessitating frequent application of ice packs to her sagging jowls. Leading man Jack Dean was also her husband offscreen.

For Sessue Hayakawa, The Cheat was a turning point. His wife, Tsuru Aoki, was by far the more successful of the two, having starred in several films for Thomas Ince, but after The Cheat Hayakawa became a major star in American films until he went to Europe in 1923. Today he is best known for his work in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957).

The surviving version of The Cheat is the 1918 reissue, and there were a number of minor changes made for this release. In the original film Tori was identified as Japanese. In 1918, with the Japanese as allies in the World War, the character's name and nationality were changed, and the terse subtitles of the original were inflated for literary effects. As an example, in 1915 Tori's introduction read: "One of Long Island's Smart Set." But in 1918, audiences were introduced to: "Naka Arakau, a Burmese ivory king to whom the Long Island smart-set is paying social tribute".

The Cheat was remade twice in America, in 1923 with Pola Negri and in 1931 with Tallulah Bankhead. It also served ad the basis for the French opera Forfaiture, and Hayakawa reprised his role in a 1937 remake, also called Forfaiture.