A Lost Film of Lambert Hillyer, Starring George Hackathorne and Lucille Ricksen

Hollywood director LAMBERT HILLYER made three films in 1924 according to standard reference sources, Those Who Dance, Barbara Frietchie, and Idle Tongues. However, contemporary trade papers and newspapers show that he directed and completed the shooting of another film that year GOLD HEELS, originally titled CHECKERS, which was never released but remade by Fox under the same title using another director, a new script, and a different cast. Of Hillyer's film there are reproductions of a few stills and we hear of a preview but the film is lost - not only in the physical sense but it has gone unrecorded in filmographies of the director and of the actors (who included Lucille Ricksen) and in the American Silent Feature Film Database. Set out here is the evidence for Hillyer's film with some thoughts on possible reasons for its suppression (he was arrested and jailed soon after its completion) and on his relationship with Thomas Ince.