Ivan Abramson
1869 - 1934Ivan Abramson (1869 - September 15, 1934) was a director of American silent films active in the 1910s and 1920s.
Abramson emigrated to the United States from Russia in the 1880s and soon became involved in the Jewish newspaper field. In 1905 he founded an opera company. In 1914, he founded Ivan Film Productions to produce silent films, with the Sins of the Parents as his first release. In 1917, after success with pictures including One Law for Both and Enlighten Thy Daughter, Abramson partnered with William Randolph Hearst to form the Graphic Film Corporation.
Abramson's films feature melodramas with titillating titles such as Forbidden Fruit (1915) and A Child for Sale (1920), and sexual hygiene films such as The Sex Lure (1916) and Enlighten Thy Daughter (1917). Abramson's alliance ended with the 1919 release of The Echo of Youth.
In 1923, Abramson and Sidney M. Goldin directed East and West, filmed in Austria and starring Molly Picon, and which had English and Yiddish subtitles.
Abramson died on September 15, 1934 in New York at Mount Sinai Hospital, survived by his wife Liza Einhorn. He was 65.
A Child for Sale
Ivan Abramson
Creighton Hale, Gladys Leslie
Charles Stoddard is a poor artist living with his wife and two children in Greenwich Village. Destitute after his wife dies, he is forced to sell one of his children to a childless rich woman. He soon comes his senses however, and tries to back out of the deal.
A Child for Sale
The Faded Flower
Ivan Abramson
Marguerite Snow, Rose Coghlan
Lillian Hill, a poor stenographer, sacrifices her romance with an equally poor playwright, Henry Parker, to marry her boss Wilbur Mason. She does this only so that she will have the means to pay for surgery to restore her mother's sight. But the surgery is unsuccessful, and her coldness towards Mason arouses his jealousy.
The Faded Flower
Sins of Ambition
Ivan Abramson
Wilfred Lucas, Leah Baird
Andrew Maxwell is so intent on creating a universal language that he completely neglects his wife, Laurette, and daughter, Ruth. Laurette decides she wants to return to the stage and is encouraged by Charles Prescott, a former suitor. When Maxwell discovers Laurette and Prescott together, he berates her, and she angrily moves out, taking Ruth along with her.
Sins of Ambition
Ost und West
Ivan Abramson, Sidney M. Goldin
Molly Picon, Jacob Kalich
Morris Brown, a New York gambler acquainted more with his checkbook than his prayer book, returns to Galicia with his very American daughter, Mollie (Molly Picon) for a family wedding. But Mollie, whose exuberant antics fill the film, unexpectedly meets her match--an engaging young yeshiva scholar who forsake tradition and joins the secular world to win her heart.
East and West
Meddling Women
Ivan Abramson
Lionel Barrymore, Sigrid Holmquist
Grace Ainsworth wants to return to her career as an opera singer, and her mother-in-law supports her. Grace's husband, Edwin, wants her to stay at home and to convince her, he relates the story of his latest play about a man who allows his wife to return to the stage. Edwin comes to believe that Grace is in love with Harold Chase, a manager, and the couple separates. Edwin has an affair with a dancer, Madeline, and he winds up in a fight with her dancing partner, Vincenti, which causes him to lose his memory.
Meddling Women
Someone Must Pay
Ivan Abramson
Gail Kane, Edmund Lowe
Broker Henry Taylor is furious at the attention his wife Regina receives from Charles Bryant, an elderly bachelor. When he comes home one night and finds Regina in Bryant's arms, he orders him to leave. Bryant obliges, but he doesn't go away -- when the Taylors' daughter, Vivian, has a birthday, Bryant gives her a Shetland pony.
Someone Must Pay
