The Million Dollar Mystery

The Million Dollar Mystery is a 23chapter film serial, released in 1914, directed by Howell Hansel, and starring Florence La Badie and James Cruze.

A prize of 10,000 was offered for the best suggestion advertised as 10,000 for 100 words. Thousands of letters were received in response to this and Ida Damon, a secretary from St. Louis, won the prize. In a further publicity stunt, the character Florence Hargreaves was actually reported missing. Details of the plot were fed to newspapers and the police as if they were real events. Seven days passed before this story was exposed as fiction.A prologue for The Million Dollar Mystery introduced the characters and groups. After the opening title card shows hundreds of hands grasping for the money and then a shot of the check for 10,000 the solver of the mystery is shown prior to the beginning of the first reel. Baby Florence is left at a boarding school with a note and half a bracelet instructing that her father will come to take her back upon her eighteenth birthday. Hargreaves, here played by Alfred Norton, is chased by the Black Hundred, but he receives a note and money before attempting to escape by balloon on the top of a building. The balloon is shot down and the first chapter ends.1183 ........

Source: Wikipedia