Three Word Brand
1921 film by Lambert Hillyer
Three Word Brand is a 1921 American silent Western film distributed by Paramount Pictures that was directed by Lambert Hillyer and starred William S. Hart and Jane Novak. Hart plays three roles in the film.
Plot
As described in a film magazine, pioneer Ben Trego sends his twin baby sons on the trail while he turns to fight Indians in the wilds of Utah. When they close in on him, he commits suicide by igniting a keg of gunpowder, slaying several of the assailants in the explosion. His sons are picked up by riders who take them to the nearest settlement where they are adopted by different families. One of the boys becomes a rancher known as the Three Word Brand due to his sparsity of speech while the other becomes governor of the state. Neither knows of the other. The rancher is in partnership with George Barton who is accused of murder, but Brand believes in his innocence. At the same time Governor Marsden has been asked to sign a water bill which will deprive the ranchers in the valley of their supply of water. The governor decides to visit the valley and is seen by Brand, who notices the resemblance and hatches a plan to free his partner of the murder charge.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Three Word Brand” as 1921 film by Lambert Hillyer. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 1921 film by Lambert Hillyer. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16924868. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1921.
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.
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This entry incorporates text from “Three Word Brand” 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.