The Trail of the Lonesome Pine

The third of director Cecil B. DeMille’s five 1916 releases was this five-reel adaptation of John William Fox’s novel (and Eugene Walter’s stage play) The Trail of the Lonesome Pine. Set in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, the story gets under way when revenue agent Jack Hale (Thomas Meighan shows up in the region to locate a thriving whiskey still operated by the Tolliver clan. Falling in love with June Tolliver (Charlotte Walker), Jack is tricked into a trap laid for him by June’s scurrilous kinfolk. But when it turns out that the Tollivers have a traitor in their own midst who poses an even greater threat than Jack, Old Judd Tolliver (Theodore Roberts dispenses his own form of mountain justice, capping this action by destroying the still for good and all. Old Judd then gives his blessing to the marriage of Jack and June. Trail of the Lonesome Pine would be remade several times in the future, most famously as the first “outdoor” Technicolor production in 1936.