The Missing Links (1916) Fine Arts/Triangle. Directed by Lloyd Ingraham. Scenario by Bernard McConville. Cast: Thomas Jefferson, Elmer Clifton, Robert Harron, Loyola O'Connor, William Higby, Elinor Stone, Norma Talmadge, Jack Brammall, Hal Wilson, Constance Talmadge, Robert Lawler. 5 reels. This film is LOST

This film was Talmadge's first for Triangle.

Review from Variety, December 17, 1915

Fine Arts (Triangle) feature, directed by Lloyd Ingraham, supervisted [sic] by Griffith. A bucolic comedy drama with enough plot to make a good play upon the legitimate stage. Norma Talmadge and Robert Harron are featured, but the entire cast is especially competent, and the only one entitled to stellar honors is Harron, who portrays a youth in about as natural a manner as it is possible to conceive. A murder has been committed and two brothers believe the other has committed it. The working out of the plot is ingenious in its bucolic simplicity. Needless to add the photography is of the superior kind and this, with the fine direction, the good plot and the competent acting, makes for a treat in picturizing.

Review from Moving Picture World, December 18, 1915

"The Missing Links" (Fine Arts)
Reviewed by Louis Reeves Harrison.

"The Missing Links" indicates in its title that it needs a guardian. To use any name so near the Darwinian "Missing Links," long a subject of comedy comment, as the title of a story dependent on the solving of a murder mystery for interest, is, to say the least, deplorable. The story contains some dramatic elements and, worked out in true motion-pcture form, the form that Griffith did so much to create and make popular, it might be developed into a thrilling one-reel or two-reel screen story. In its attenuated five-reel form, in spite of good acting, good directing and fine scientific work, it is not up to the standard set by earlier Fine Art films. The director has evidently done the best he could be expected to do with scant material, a murder mystery solved through the finding of one of a pair of cuff links left by the murderer at his victim's side, rounded out by the weakest of endings, the criminal's confession.

Review from Moving Picture World, December 15, 1915

Coming Triangle Attractions
Billie Burke, Marie Doro and the Talmadge Sisters Featured in Three Strong Productions.

[omitted the first two reviews]

The advent of the Talmadge sisters, Norma and Constance, to the Griffith studio, is one of the recent pleasant incidents of Triangle activities, and their first new play under this sign, "The Missing Links," is scheduled for early presentation at the Knickerbocker theater. Miss Norma Talmadge is one of the youngest stars at Griffithville. Her entire experience has been in the films. In her first effort for the Triangle she is co-star with Robert Harron, and the quality of the cast is indicated by the fact that Thomas Jefferson, Elmer Clifton, Hal Wilson and Constance Talmadge are in it. "The Missing Links" takes its queer title from the circumstances tha a missing cuff link figures as a clew to the discovery of a murderer. The play is an absorbing ale of loves an hates and financial tangles in a small country town.

[Omitted: photo of three people-not legible in the copy I have from the microfilm-with the cut line: Scene from "The Missing Links" (Triangle-Fine Arts).

Review from Moving Picture World, January 8, 1916

THE MISSING LINKS (Fine Arts-Jan. 16).-The cast: Norma Talmadge, Robert Harron, Thomas Jefferson, Elmer Clifton, William Higby, Jack Brammall, Constance Talmadge. How life seethes and boils at times even in a peaceful little town is recounted in this photoplay. As a background for stirring events are shown views of the quiet Main street, typical of a rural community and interiorsof a church during a service and of the homes of the tranquil inhabitants.

But love and finance inject action into the serene atmosphere. A regular feud is started against the banker and his two sons by the justice of peace, because one of the banker's sons, Robert Harron, elopes with the justice's stepdaughter, Norma Talmadge. The justice seizes an opportunity to wreak his ill-will against the banker. A rumor is started that the bank is insolvent and the depositors withdraw their money till finally the doors have to be closed. The justice is appointed receiver and leads an angry crowd to the banker's house. He is finally admitted to the house and is shown the body of the banker, who has died from the shock of disappointment. His charges of dishonesty madden Harron and he threatens to kill the justice. Things come to a climax of intensity with the death of the justice and Harron is arrested on a charge of murder.

Through an amateur detective, the bank cashier is proved to be responsible for th murder of the justice by an incriminating cuff-link found near the body. Harron is released and cleared of the accusation just as a mob breaks into the jail bent on lynching him.

Last revised, December 21, 2008