The Grub Stake (1923) watch online HD

Report from Cinesation 2006: THE GRUB-STAKE (****) This 1923 Nell Shipman production is a rip-snorting action movie with enough plot for two or three ordinary Shipmans, happily with print quality that did full justice to its Alaskan photography.

At first it's a bit dismaying to see feminist role model Shipman trying to protect her virginity from a rotter who lured her to Alaska to become a dance hall girl-- virginity is for other silent actresses to worry about, Nell Shipman should be worrying about grizzly bears and rockslides. But soon she's got her invalid father lashed to the dogsled and she's off looking for gold, taking time out along the way to curse God face to face and to frolic amid nature's larger mammals (at which point God is let off for good behavior) before a two-fisted finale with a literal cliffhanger. This picture had everything but the Johnstown Flood in it, and accompanist Ben Model's playing gave it everything he had too. The only pity is that some of the titles were noticeably jittery-- an easily remedied glitch that really shouldn't even have been let out of a major national archive for a show like this.

An innocent girl (Nell Shipman as Faith Diggs) is lured to Dawson in the Yukon with her ailing father (Walt Whitman as The Skipper) by gambler Mark Leroy (Alfred Allen) with a promise of a grub stake to start a laundry for the miners. On the ship, he asks her to marry him instead, but tells her to keep the marriage secret. When they arrive, she overhears the gambler trying to sell her to the owner of a dance hall and is told that he is already married and that he lures girls to the Yukon with empty promises.

She runs off into the wilderness with her father and an old miner (George Berrell as Malamute Mike) who is looking for a lost claim, taking supplies, dogs and a dog sled from the gambler. They get lost and separated, but she finds the lost claim while her father is nursed by a woman living in the woods.

The gambler reports her and her father as thieves and a Monty (Cecil Van Auker) arrives but he waits until her father is recovered enough to travel. The the miner goes back to Dawson to register his claim, but the gambler gets a gang together and forces the miner to return to the claim in order to steal it.

After a chase on a cliff, the gambler falls to his death but she is saved.

An unusual independent American film from a time when the studio control of the distribution channels made it difficult for independents. As in most Nell Shipman movies, she seems most interested in the 'wild' animals that she plays with.