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Movie Detail
Name Occurs Before Title Offscreen Credit Print Viewed By AFI Stub Record
The Wind
Director: Victor Seastrom (Dir)
Release Date:   23 Nov 1928
Duration (in mins):   70
Duration (in feet):   6,721
Duration (in reels):   8
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Cast:   Lillian Gish (Letty)  
    Lars Hanson (Lige)  
    Montagu Love (Roddy)  
    Dorothy Cumming (Cora)  
    Edward Earle (Beverly)  
    William Orlamond (Sourdough)  
  Cora's children: Laon Ramon    
    Carmencita Johnson    
    Billy Kent Schaefer    

Summary: Letty, a girl from Virginia, trainbound for her cousin's ranch in the western prairies, meets Roddy, who hints at a marriage proposal. At the ranch, Cora's children and husband become too fond of Letty, and she is forced to leave. With nowhere to go, she decides to accept Roddy's implied invitation to become his wife. When she discovers him already married, she hastily marries Lige, a roughhewn son of the soil at whom she had previously scoffed. While Lige is away for a round-up of wild horses during a particularly fierce windstorm, Roddy forces his way into Lige's home and stays the night with Letty, urging her to go with him in the morning. She refuses, shoots him when he becomes insistent, laboriously drags his body outside, and buries it in the shifting sand. Letty spends a day of terror that approaches madness; but Lige returns, and Letty decides that she no longer wishes to return to Virginia--they will face the wind together. 

Production Company: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp. (Loew's Inc.)
Distribution Company: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Distributing Corp. (Loew's Inc.)
Director: Victor Seastrom (Dir)
  Harold S. Bucquet (Asst dir)
Writer: Frances Marion (Scen)
  John Colton (Titles)
Photography: John Arnold (Cam)
Film Editor: Conrad A. Nervig (Film ed)
Set Decoration: Cedric Gibbons (Set dec)
  Edward Withers (Set dec)
Costumes: André-ani (Ward)
Country: United States
Language: English

Music:
Songs: "Love Brought the Sunshine," words by Herman Ruby and Dave Dreyer, music by William Axt and David Mendoza.
Composer: William Axt
  Dave Dreyer
  David Mendoza
  Herman Ruby
Source Text: Based on the novel The Wind by Dorothy Scarborough (New York & London, 1925).
Authors: Dorothy Scarborough

Copyright Claimant Copyright Date Copyright Number
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Distributing Corp. 10/11/1928 dd/mm/yyyy LP25816

Physical Properties: Sd, also Si: Talking seq and sd eff by Movietone
  b&w:

 
Genre: Melodrama
 
Subjects (Major): Cousins
  Drudges
  Seduction
  Virginians
  Winds

Note: Originally, the film's ending followed the novel's: Letty, driven insane, wanders off into the desert. According to modern sources, studio officials required a happy ending, however, before the film's release. 

Bibliographic Sources:   Date   Page
Film Daily   11 Nov 1928   p. 4.
New York Times   5 Nov 1928   p. 26.
Photoplay   1 Nov 1928   p. 52.
Variety   7 Nov 1928.   

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