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Research dossier · People & Ideas

The Locked Heart

1918 film by Henry King

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 9, 2026
Entity authorityQ2389878 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Locked Heart is a 1918 American silent drama film directed by Henry King and starring King, Gloria Joy, and Vola Vale.

Cast

Gloria Joy as Martha Mason

Henry King as Harry Mason

Vola Vale as Ruth Mason

Daniel Gilfether as Colonel Mason

Leon Pardue as The Villain

Preservation

The Locked Heart is currently presumed lost. In February of 2021, the film was cited by the National Film Preservation Board on their Lost U.S. Silent Feature Films list.

References

Bibliography

Donald W. McCaffrey & Christopher P. Jacobs. Guide to the Silent Years of American Cinema. Greenwood Publishing, 1999.

Editorial summary

“The Locked Heart” enters the record as 1918 film by Henry King. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Locked, Heart and film can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1918, 2021, 1999—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1918-01-01. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Locked, Heart and film.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“The Locked Heart” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Locked, Heart and film provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2389878. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1918, 2021 and 1999.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. 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

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “The Locked Heart”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow The Locked Heart primary sources, The Locked Heart archive and Locked 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 “The Locked Heart”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “The Locked Heart” 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.