The Half-Breed

Lo Dorman lives out in the woods, away from the town. His mother was a Native American woman. His father was a white man who left them. The town shuts him out for it. He makes a life for himself among the trees instead. Then he meets Nellie, the preacher’s daughter. The local sheriff, Dunn, wants her too, and sets out to push the young man aside. A fourth figure arrives in Teresa, a woman on the run from the law. There is a tie nobody says out loud, since the sheriff is in fact Lo’s father. The story comes from an 1882 novella by Bret Harte. Anita Loos wrote the screenplay and D. W. Griffith produced. Douglas Fairbanks and Alma Rubens appear in the seventy two minute silent film, an American production Allan Dwan finished in 1916.