Shoes

Shoes is a 1916 silent film drama directed by Lois Weber and starring Mary MacLaren. It was distributed by the Universal Film Manufacturing Company and produced by Bluebird Photoplays, a subsidiary of Universal based in New York City and with access to Universal's studio facilities in Fort Lee, New Jersey as well as in California. Shoes was added to the National Film Registry in 2014. The film was held and restored by the EYE Film Institute Netherlands between 2008 and 2011. It is available on DVD and Blu-ray with a score composed by Donald Sosin and Mimi Rabson and audio commentary by film historian Shelley Stamp. Plot Eva Mayer (Mary MacLaren) works in a five-and-dime store for five dollars a week. That meager salary must solely support her family of two parents and three sisters because her father (Harry Griffith) prefers to lie in bed reading, smoking his pipe, and drinking pails of beer rather than looking for work. Eva desperately needs new shoes. The only pair she has are literally falling to pieces with soles that have large holes, so large in fact that she must insert pieces of cardboard inside her shoes to protect her feet. Finally, Eva decides to sleep with Charlie (William V. Mong), a local cabaret singer, in exchange for money. She buys new shoes but learns the same day that her father has finally secured a job, at least temporary work.