A Child for Sale
A Child for Sale is a lost 1920 American silent drama film directed by Ivan Abramson, starring Gladys Leslie and Creighton Hale. Plot. Charles Stoddard (played by Hale) is a poor artist living with his wife and two children in Greenwich Village. Destitute after his wife dies, he is forced to sell one of his children for $1,000 to a childless rich woman. He soon comes to his senses however, and backs out of the deal. From there, the story takes a number of twists and turns involving Ruth Gardner (Leslie) (the wife of Dr.  Gardner who treats Stoddard's child for illness) and Ruth's parents -- whose father is also Stoddard's landlord and mother is later revealed to be Stoddard's long-lost mother from a prior marriage. Publicity. The ad campaign for the film included a faux advertisement for selling a child. Reception. Critic Burns Mantle noted some shortcomings of the film in his review of the "melodramatic opus" in "Photoplay", stating that "Ivan Abramson's idea of what constitutes a coherent and convincing dramatic story, taking this picture as a sample, offer many opportunities for the raucous hoot and the mirthful  snort. ...His picture is an inartistic jumble of unrelated incidents to me ..." Other contemporary reviews were of a more non-specific and generally positive nature, such as the review by the "New York Clipper" which described the picture as "intensely interesting from start to finish."