Sold at Auction explained

Sold at Auction is a 1917 American silent drama film directed by Sherwood MacDonald and starring Lois Meredith, William Conklin, and Marguerite Nichols.^[1]

Cast

• Lois Meredith as Nan
• William Conklin as Richard Stanley
• Marguerite Nichols as Helen
• Frank Mayo as Hal Norris
• Charles Dudley as William Raynor
• Lucy Blake as Raynor's Sister

Censorship

The film industry created the National Association of the Motion Picture Industry in 1916 in an effort to preempt censorship by states and municipalities, and it used a list of subjects called the "Thirteen Points" which film plots were to avoid. Sold at Auction, with its white slavery plot line, is an example of a film that clearly violated the Thirteen Points and yet was still distributed.^[2] Since the NAMPI was ineffective, it was replaced in 1922.

Preservation

With no copies of Sold at Auction listed in any film archive,^[3] it is a lost film

Bibliography

• Langman, Larry. American Film Cycles: The Silent Era. Greenwood Publishing, 1998.

Notes and References

1. Langman p. 398
2. Campbell . Russell . Prostitution and Film Censorship in the USA . Screening the Past . 2 . C/4 . 1997 . registration . 2020-07-05.
3. http://lcweb2.loc.gov:8081/diglib/ihas/loc.mbrs.sfdb.9352/default.html Library of Congress American Silent Feature Film Survival Database: Sold at Auction