Uncle Tom's Cabin (1910 Thanhouser film)

Uncle Tom's Cabin
A surviving film still.
Produced by	Thanhouser Company
Release date	July 26, 1910 (1910-07-26)
Country	United States
Language	Silent film English inter-titles

Uncle Tom's Cabin is a 1910 American silent short drama produced by the Thanhouser Company. The film was adapted by from the 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. The plot of the Thanhouser production streamlined the actual story to portray the film over the course of a single reel. The film was released on July 26, 1910, on the same day that Vitagraph released the first reel of their own three reel version of Uncle Tom's Cabin. This prompted the Thanhouser Company to advertise against the Vitagraph film by referring to the other as being overly drawn out. The film garnered mixed, but mostly positive reception in trade publications. The film is presumed lost.

Though the film is presumed lost, a synopsis survives in The Moving Picture World from July 30, 1910. It states: "The story opens in winter when Mr. Shelby has to sell some of his slaves due to business problems. Until this time they have lived all their lives with him, and he has been noted for his kindness to them.... Unfortunately the person to whom he was compelled to sell is the slave owner of the other sort, brutal, heartless, and a hard master - Simon Legree. Legree agrees to buy as many slaves as he desires, provided that Mr. Shelby gives him his choice. The slaves are passed and reviewed, and Legree selects Uncle Tom, one of the oldest and trusted, and the young son of Eliza, also a slave who has been with Shelby for many years. Despite the protestations of Mr. Shelby and the entreaties of the slaves themselves, these two are heartlessly taken from their homes and families. Legree refuses to buy any of the others, and as Shelby needs immediate money, he is forced to sell these two. The small boy is torn from his mother's arms and placed in Uncle Tom's care to be taken with him to Legree's plantation. But Uncle Tom cannot resist a mother's pleading, and when Eliza entreats him to give her back her child he does so and aids her to escape with him."

"For this deed he is beaten by Legree and forced to join the bloodhounds in which Legree institutes to recover the slave. Eliza, with her boy in her arms, escapes over the Kentucky border to Ohio, a free state, making a perilous crossing on one block of ice to another on the Ohio River. Terribly overcome by the cold and faint from exposure, Eliza is carried unconscious to the home of Senator Bird of Ohio. Tracked down by the purchaser, Simon Legree, to Bird's home, Mr. Bird out of goodness buys the boy and, giving him his freedom, gives him to his mother. Uncle Tom is not fortunate enough to find another purchaser and is taken by Legree to the plantation in Mississippi, finding on the trip that the new owner has taken a dislike to him and treats him with great brutality."