The Regeneration (1915) on Netflix
Passed19151h 12mBiographyCrimeDramaRomance
After his mother dies, Owen Conway is taken in by the Conways but runs away and grows up to lead a gang. Marie Deering, a settlement worker, teaches him to read.
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- Netflix4.2/5
- IMDb6.8/101,586 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes100%
Plot summary
Owen Conway is ten when his mother dies, leaving him in the care of the Conways, whose drunken husband beats him. He runs away and finds work chopping ice on the New York docks, where he defends a hunchback from a street tough named Skinny. By twenty-five, Owen leads a gang. Marie Deering, a socialite curious about gangsters, visits a café with District Attorney Ames. When Ames is threatened, Owen steps in to protect him, hoping to impress Marie. Disturbed by the poverty she sees, Marie becomes a settlement worker. She teaches Owen to read and write, and he begins to leave his old life behind, drawn to her.
Cast
- William Sheeras Skinny - One of the Gang
- John McCannas Owen - Age 10
- Peggy Barnas Woman(uncredited)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Regeneration (1915)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- While filming a scene in which actors jumped off a boat into the river, fireboats and police arrived to calm the "crowds", and director Raoul Walsh was taken to the local station house, amused. The studio relished the free publicity.
- Regeneration was thought to be lost until it was rediscovered in the 1970s. A copy is now preserved and held by the Museum of Modern Art Department of Film and the Film Preservation Associates.
- Regeneration was shot on location in New York City's Lower East Side and used real prostitutes, gangsters and homeless people as extras.
- Raoul Walsh, 28, was in New York on a three-picture Fox Film Corporation contract worth $400 a week when he was assigned Regeneration, which was to be the first feature-length gangster film in the United States.
- Fox Film Corporation's William Fox was so pleased with Regeneration that he bought director Raoul Walsh a Simplex automobile and paid him a salary of $800 a week, a small fortune in 1915.
- Regeneration is a candid adaptation of the autobiography of Owen Frawley Kildare, who was known as the Kipling of the Bowery.
- Raoul Walsh had played John Wilkes Booth in The Birth of a Nation; Regeneration was his first feature directing project and he went on to direct 140 other feature films.
