The Snake in the Grass

Margie lives on the "Flying B" ranch and expects the ordinary hazards of Texas grass, not people who hide in plain sight until it's time to strike. When a smooth-talking tenderfoot turns up asking to board at the ranch, Margie takes to him quickly, while her father keeps a wary eye. Jack, the foreman and Margie's longtime friend, grows uneasy as the newcomer wins her attention, but he doesn't start trouble, he watches and waits. The film tracks this awkward shift in loyalties and the thin line between hospitality and danger, without revealing how those tensions resolve.

This 1911 silent Western was directed by William F. Haddock and stars William Clifford as Jack, Edith Storey as Margie, Francis Ford as Texas Ed, and Henry Stanley as Margie's father. It fits the short, action-focused style of early American studio productions and relies on straightforward staging and brisk storytelling.

Box office and distribution records for the picture aren't available, and any commercial performance from the time remains undocumented in surviving public sources. Like many films of the 1910s, its audience reach and financial returns are hard to trace today.

The movie sits in early cinema's growing body of Westerns and shows several actors who would build long careers on stage and screen. Edith Storey and Francis Ford appear in many period productions, so while this title isn't prominent now, it helps illustrate acting styles and genre conventions of the era. It survives in references mostly through filmographies and archives.

There are almost no contemporary reviews extant, but the story foregrounds themes of appearance versus reality, young romance complicated by social expectation, and the uneasy balance between trust and suspicion on the frontier. Scenes emphasize small personal confrontations rather than large shootouts, and the moral tension comes from everyday choices, manners and jealousy rather than heroic spectacle.