A Child for Sale

A Child for Sale is a lost 1920 American silent drama film directed by Ivan Abramson, starring Gladys Leslie and Creighton Hale.

Plot

Charles Stoddard is a poor artist living with his wife and two children in Greenwich Village. Destitute after his wife dies, he is forced to sell one of his children for $1,000 to a childless rich woman. He soon comes to his senses however, and backs out of the deal. From there, the story takes a number of twists and turns involving Ruth Gardner and Ruth's parents—whose father is also Stoddard's landlord and mother is later revealed to be Stoddard's long-lost mother from a prior marriage.

Cast

Gladys Leslie as Ruth Gardner
Creighton Hale as Charles Stoddard
Bobby Connelly as Walter Stoddard
Julia Swayne Gordon as Paula Harrison
William H. Tooker as William Harrison
Anna Lehr as Catherine Bell
William B. Davidson as Dr. Gardner
"Baby" Ruth Sullivan as Sylvia Stoddard

Publicity

The ad campaign for the film included a faux advertisement for selling a child.

Reception

Critic Burns Mantle noted some shortcomings of the film in his review of the "melodramatic opus" in Photoplay, stating that "Ivan Abramson's idea of what constitutes a coherent and convincing dramatic story, taking this picture as a sample, offer many opportunities for the raucous hoot and the mirthful snort....His picture is an inartistic jumble of unrelated incidents to me..." Other contemporary reviews were of a more non-specific and generally positive nature, such as the review by the New York Clipper which described the picture as "intensely interesting from start to finish."