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The Return of Eve

1916 film by Arthur Berthelet

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 revisionApr 22, 2026
Entity authorityQ15121718
Source-derived summary

The Return of Eve, also known as When Eve Came Back, is a 1916 American silent film, adapted from a play by Lee Wilson Dodd. The Essanay Studios five-reel film was directed by Arthur Berthelet with Edna Mayo and Eugene O'Brien in the starring roles. H.S. Sheldon wrote the screenplay. The film is presumed lost.

The play was staged 29 times in 1909, at the Herald Square Theatre on Broadway.

Scenes for the film were shot in the Midwest, including in Chicago, while settings were filmed in northern Wisconsin near the banks of the Dells of the Wisconsin River. The plot features the leads raised in a natural setting before being relocated to a metropolis as adults. They return to pastoral life and reunite.

Cast

Edna Mayo as Eve

Eugene O'Brien as Adam

Edward R. Mawson as David Winters

Leona Ball as Clarice Bellamy

Edward Arnold as Seymour Purchwell

Renee Clemmons as Trixie Shevlin

John Cossar as John Raymond

Emily Fitzroy as Mrs.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Return of Eve” is 1916 film by Arthur Berthelet. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Return, film and Arthur, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1916, 1909—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1916-01-01. For this dossier, Return, film and Arthur is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “1916 film by Arthur Berthelet” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q15121718. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1916 and 1909.

Critical limits

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.

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 “The Return of Eve”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow The Return of Eve primary sources, The Return of Eve archive and Return 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 Return of Eve”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from The Return of Eve” 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.