Reviews of silent film releases on home video.
Copyright © 1999-2026 by Carl Bennett
and the Silent Era Company.
All Rights Reserved. |
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The Social
Secretary
(1916)
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Norma Talmadge stars as a beautiful secretary who stays one step ahead of her wolfish employers by taking a job as a social secretary to a society woman. Erich von Stroheim appears in a small role as a newspaper reporter.
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 Grapevine Video
2004 DVD edition
The Social Secretary (1916), color-toned black & white and color-tinted black & white, 52 minutes, not rated, with The Forbidden City (1918), black & white, 62 minutes, not rated.
Grapevine Video, no catalog number, UPC 8-42614-10042-0.
One single-sided, single-layered, Region 0 NTSC DVD-R disc; 1.33:1 aspect ratio picture in full-frame 4:3 (720 x 480 pixels) interlaced scan image encoded in SDR MPEG-2 format at 4.5 Mbps average video bit rate (capable of progressive scan upscaling to 60 fps); Dolby Digital (AC3) 2.0 stereo sound encoded at 224 Kbps audio bit rate; English language intertitles, no subtitles; 6 chapter stops; standard DVD keepcase; $14.95.
Release date: 2004.
Country of origin: USA
Ratings (1-10): video: 4 / audio: 3 / additional content: 4 / overall: 4.
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This DVD-R edition has been mastered from a dark, color-toned 16mm reduction print, with dust, speckling, splice jumps, emulsion scuffing and scrapes, and other print flaws. Not great but better viewing than some of the Talmadge films in other editions mastered from reduction prints.
The film is accompanied by a music score performed on theater pipe organ that may originate from the print's optical soundtrack.
For our notes on the accompanying feature, see our The Forbidden City on home video page.
For now, this is our recommended home video edition of the film.
This review was updated in 2025.
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This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is available directly from . . .
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 Alpha Video
2012 DVD edition
The Social Secretary (1916), black & white, 48 minutes, not rated, with ’Twas Henry’s Fault (1919), black & white, 11 minutes, not rated.
Alpha Home Entertainment, distributed by Oldies.com,
ALP 6696D, UPC 0-89218-66969-8.
One single-sided, single-layered, Region 0 NTSC DVD-R disc; 1.33:1 aspect ratio picture in full-frame 4:3 (720 x 480 pixels) interlaced scan image encoded in SDR MPEG-2 format at 6.2 Mbps average video bit rate (capable of progressive scan upscaling to 60 fps); Dolby Digital (AC3) 2.0 mono sound encoded at 384 Kbps audio bit rate; English language intertitles, no subtitles; 6 chapter stops; standard DVD keepcase; $7.98 (raised again to $9.99).
Release date: 3 January 2012.
Country of origin: USA
Ratings (1-10): video: 2 / audio: 2 / additional content: 3 / overall: 2.
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This DVD-R edition has been mastered from a fair Blackhawk Films 8mm reduction print. Dust, speckling, schmutz, filmbase wear, and other print flaws are present. The video transfer is contrasty, with plugged-up shadows and blasted out highlights.
The film is accompanied by a soundtrack compiled from preexisting jazz music recordings. Some of the music is annoyingly inappropriate.
Supplemental material includes a short comedy featuring Elinor Field and Harry Depp mastered from a fair 8mm reduction print.
Not at all recommended. Until a better edition comes along, get the Grapevine Video edition noted above.
This review was updated in 2026.
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This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is available from
ALPHA VIDEO through . . .
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Other silent era NORMA TALMADGE films available on home video.
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