1917 silent movie based on book by Wilcox County native Mary Fenollosa

Tomorrow – Nov. 26 – marks 103 years since the 1917 release of the silent film, “The Eternal Mother,” which was based on a book by Wilcox County native, Mary M. Fenollosa.

“The Eternal Mother” was directed by Frank Reicher and was produced by Metro Pictures. The movie starred Ethel Barrymore, Frank Mills, J.W. Johnston, Charles Sutton, Louis Wolheim and Maxine Elliott. One of the most famous actresses of her day, Barrymore was regarded as the “First Lady of the American Theatre,” and she is notably the great-aunt of modern-day actress, Drew Barrymore.

“The Eternal Mother” is 50 minutes long and centers on Maris, portrayed by Ethel Barrymore, a woman who marries the owner of a mill after learning that her first husband and daughter have died. Maris tries to convince her new husband to do away with the use of child labor in his mill, only to find out later that her first husband is still alive and that her daughter is a worker at the mill. When it’s all said and done, her mill-owning husband removes the child workers from his mill, and all of their twisted family matters get sorted out.

The movie was based on Fenollosa’s 1909 book, “Red Horse Hill,” which was published under her penname, Sidney McCall. Fenollosa was born Mary McNeill in March 1865 to Confederate officer William Stoddard McNeill and Laura Sibley McNeill. Sources say that Mary was born on a Wilcox County plantation that belonged to her grandparents, Origen and Elizabeth Sibley, after her mother took refuge in Wilcox County when Yankee soldiers burned their family home in Baldwin County during the War Between the States.

After the war, Fenollosa went on to write a number of books and more than a few of them were set in her home state of Alabama. Some of her most famous books include “Truth Dexter” (1901), “The Breath of the Gods” (1905), “The Dragon Painter” (1906), “The Strange Woman” (1914), “Ariadne of Allan Water” (1914), “The Stirrup Latch” (1915), “Sunshine Beggars” (1918) and “Christopher Laird” (1919). In addition to “The Eternal Mother,” two of her other books – “The Breath of the Gods” and “The Dragon Painter” – were also made into movies.

Fenollosa went on to live to the ripe old age of 88, passing away in 1954, more than three decades after the publication of her last book. Today, if you go to the Magnolia Cemetery in Mobile, you’ll find her grave there, not far from the graves of her parents. Her headstone bears the simple inscription of “Author, Poet, Beloved Mother.”

In the end, I’d like to hear from anyone in the reading audience with more information about Fenollosa’s family ties to Wilcox County. It would also be interesting to know where the Sibley plantation was located in Wilcox County and if the old family home still stands today. I would not be surprised to learn that Fenollosa still has a number of distant relatives living within the confines of present-day Wilcox County.