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Shadows of a Great City

1913 film by Frank Wilson

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 26, 2026
Entity authorityQ16605650 ↗
Source-derived summary

Shadows of a Great City is a 1913 British silent crime film directed by Frank Wilson and starring Alec Worcester, Chrissie White and Harry Royston. It is an adaptation of the 1884 play The Shadows of a Great City by Herbert Blaché and Aaron Hoffman. An American film adaptation was made two years later.

Cast

Alec Worcester as Tom Cooper

Chrissie White as Nellie Standish

Harry Royston as Jim Malone

William Felton as Abe Nathan

Harry Gilbey as George Benton

John MacAndrews as Insp. Arkwright

Ruby Belasco as Biddy Malone

References

Bibliography

Goble, Alan. The Complete Index to Literary Sources in Film. Walter de Gruyter, 1999.

Editorial summary

“Shadows of a Great City” enters the record as 1913 film by Frank Wilson. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Shadows, Great and City can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA useful identification and reception guide that helps separate the work itself from editions, performances, ownership and later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1913, 1884, 1999—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1913-01-01. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Shadows, Great and City.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Shadows of a Great City” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Shadows, Great and City provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16605650. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1913, 1884 and 1999.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Shadows of a Great City”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Shadows of a Great City primary sources, Shadows of a Great City archive and Shadows research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Shadows of a Great City”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Shadows of a Great City” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.