He clearly felt he had “bought” her when he lent the money, and he proves it by taking out a wax seal and branding her with his mark! Understandably displeased, Fanny picks up a revolver and shoots him in the shoulder, running off into the night.
When Dean’s investment pays off, Fanny is jubilant, and runs over to pay off Sessue, but he’s not having it. Salvation comes in the form of Sessue Hayakawa (who we saw in “ Last of the Line” and later got an oscar nomination for “ Bridge on the River Kwai”), a wealthy Asian financier, who offers to loan her the money to save face. So, she wisely decides to invest the money entrusted to her by the Red Cross in a shady copper mine pushed on her by some guy at a party. Here, Fanny Ward (later in “ Her Strange Wedding” and “ Witchcraft”) is a young socialite with no head for money, whose husband (played by her real-life husband Jack Dean, whose credits include “ The Marriage of Kitty” and “ A School for Husbands”) refuses to buy her fancy gowns and lingerie while his money is tied up in an important investment. He lept in with Westerns like “ The Squaw Man” and “ The Virginian,” then graduated in 1915 to dramas like this one (the epics he’s remembered for today don’t come along until the twenties). Unlike the previous generation of directors, he didn’t have to serve a long apprenticeship making short films, and unlike directors bound to the Edison Trust, he didn’t have to fight to be able to work in feature length. DeMille was lucky to start making movies independently in 1914.
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