The Greatest Power
1917 film by Edwin Carewe
The Greatest Power is a 1917 silent film drama directed by Edwin Carewe and starring Ethel Barrymore. It was produced and distributed by Metro Pictures.
Cast
Ethel Barrymore - Miriam Monroe
William B. Davidson - John Conrad
Harry S. Northrup - Albert Bernard
Frank Currier - Randolph Monroe
William Black - Bradford Duncan
Cecil Owen - Eric Johansen
Frederick C. Truesdell - Professor Poole
Redfield Clark - Major General Foster
Rudolph de Cordova - Williams
W. M. Armstrong - Captain Herbert
Preservation
With no prints of The Greatest Power located in any film archives, it is considered a lost film.
“The Greatest Power” enters the record as 1917 film by Edwin Carewe. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Greatest, Power and film can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“The Greatest Power” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Greatest, Power and film provides the most credible route into that argument.
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 Aug 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q28442749. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1917.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. 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.
- Identifying works and editions
- Tracing reception history
- Finding collection records
The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “The Greatest Power”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow The Greatest Power primary sources, The Greatest Power archive and Greatest research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Greatest Power”?
- Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
- How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “The Greatest Power” 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.