In her earliest known scripts, Havey experimented with serious thematic and topical variants of the drama genre, ranging from jealousy, domestic quarrels, and alcoholism, to romance, love triangles, and sisterly bonds. At the Masquerade Ball was her first credit following her Griffith collaborations, and brings a more light-hearted, comedic tone to the kinds of stories she wrote for Biograph. The story revolves around a high-society event attended by a young secretary named Margaret, who happens upon an invitation to a masquerade ball. While remaining masked she dances and engages in a mutual flirtation with her boss’s friend Jack Van Rensellaer, but the game of hidden identities turns dramatic when Mrs. Winslow loses her diamond brooch, and, after asking everyone to remove their disguises, she assumes that Margaret is the thief. Jack defends her honour, and once the brooch is found Jack happily introduces her to his mother and they confirm their relationship.
The script deals with issues of social mobility: Margaret succeeds in challenging the class hierarchy, personally and socially, through her honesty and the power of romantic love. Such a scenario would have appealed to the large numbers of female moviegoers who fantasized, about “upward mobility through leisure” (Shelley Stamp, Movie-Struck Girls, 2018), offering a poignant reflection of their lives in Margaret’s situation.
Exteriors were shot in Manhattan, including a scene with Margaret in front of the Park & Tilford Building, housing a luxury grocery emporium, in Harlem; the site would have been easily accessible from Edison’s studios in the Bronx.
Director Ashley Miller (1867‒1949) started out as an actor and stage manager in vaudeville and touring theatrical companies before moving to motion pictures in 1906, spending a substantial part of his career with Edison as a director, writer, and producer. He also made forays into animation beginning in 1916 and continuing into the early 1920s, in connection with John Randolph Bray’s productions and Paramount Pictographs. In the early 1930s he returned to work in the theatre, where he focused on children’s entertainments. – Olivia Hărşan, María Hernández, John Jacobsen