At a Quarter of Two

Dan Nolan is a laborer down on his luck, laid off and desperate enough to consider stealing. He slips into the house of Homer Warren intending to take whatever might ease his hardship. Inside the family is shadowed by a serious illness affecting their little daughter, and Nolan hides in a closet to avoid detection. From his cramped hiding place he watches the household through a keyhole, overhearing a doctor insist that the child's medicine be given exactly at a certain hour. As night deepens, the family drifts into sleep and the scheduled moment approaches, leaving Nolan with an urgent moral choice about whether to act and how much risk to accept.

Released in 1911, the short silent was directed by Thomas H. Ince and featured Mary Pickford as Mrs Warren with King Baggot as Dan Nolan, two early screen stars whose names helped shape the nascent American film industry and their legacy.

There are no reliable box office records for this lost 1911 short, and any information about ticket receipts or distribution is scarce. Early studio accounting was often informal, so commercial performance for films like this remains largely undocumented even today.

As a lost film it survives only in records and synopses, yet its association with Mary Pickford and Thomas H. Ince gives it significance for historians tracing silent era conventions. The plot's focus on poverty, sacrifice and moral choice echoes themes common in early melodramas and in later popular cinema.

Contemporary reviews are scarce and the film's lost status prevents modern reassessment, but surviving descriptions highlight its emotional dilemma, social realism and moral tension. It frames economic desperation, parental anxiety and ethical decision making, showing how small domestic moments were used to address broader social worries in early cinema period.