Cinema
The Dop Doctor
L. C. MacBean and Fred Paul · 1915
Synopsis
An orphan handed over as a child to an unscrupulous innkeeper, Lynette Mildare runs away, wanders the veld and is taken in by nuns who raise her in the convent. War breaks out, and the frontier town where she lives is held by British troops during the siege of Mafeking. She falls in love with Lord Beauvayse, an officer sent to have the convent evacuated, who is already married. The town is also home to Dr Owen Saxham, nicknamed the Dop Doctor because of his drunkenness, whom the young woman's love pulls out of his decline.
Context
The film adapts the first novel by Clotilde Graves, published in 1910 under the name of Richard Dehan, whose hero, a disgraced doctor, redeems his honour during the siege. Produced by the Samuelson company from a screenplay by Harry Engholm, it also bears the titles The Love Trail and The Terrier and the Child, and Fred Paul plays the doctor. Judged unfair to the Boers, it was banned in South Africa by the government of Louis Botha. Mafeking was then the capital of the Bechuanaland Protectorate, although situated outside its territory.
Who it is for
A silent melodrama of the colonial era, to be seen as a document of the British view of the South African conflict.
Prizes and reception
No film before it had been banned by the South African authorities; it was released in the United States in January 1916.