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Mary Miles Minter stars in “The Ghost of Rosy Taylor.” Image: Picture Play magazine, September 1918
By Betsy J. Green
Mary Miles Minter has the lead role in this social comedy called “The Ghost of Rosy Taylor” that was released in July 1918. She plays a penniless American orphan living in France who travels to the U.S. and finds a job cleaning a mansion. She falls in love with the mansion owner’s son. At the end of the movie, she discovers that she is the heir of the millionaire whose mansion she has been cleaning. And then he falls in love with her when he learns she is rich.
Such is the stuff that dreams are made of. And this is also the stuff that many movies are made of. One reviewer wrote wearily, “We have had many, many screenplays of the poor little girl working in the home of the affluent rich, falling in love with the only son who marries her upon discovering that she is the heiress of millions.”
My next Way Back When book — 1918 — will be available in local bookstores in November, and at Amazon.com. This will be the fifth book in my series of the history of Santa Barbara, one year at a time.
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