When the Earth Trembled

When the Earth Trembled
Directed by	Barry O'Neil
Produced by	Siegmund Lubin
Written by	Edwin Barbour
Starring	Ethel Clayton Harry Myers
Production company	Lubin Manufacturing Company
Distributed by	General Film Company
Release dates	November 1913 (1913-11) (San Francisco, California)
Running time	Three reels; 43 min.
Country	United States
Language	Silent film English intertitles

When the Earth Trembled (1913) is an American silent disaster film starring Ethel Clayton and Harry Myers. The film, a short feature, may be the first fiction film to depict the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.^[1]

Motion Picture Story Magazine (September 1913) published a story version of the screenplay by Henry Albert Phillips.

Plot

A mother (Clayton) and her two young children live through the 1906 earthquake.

Director O'Neil's insistence on being as realistic as possible nearly cost Clayton her life. The actress almost died in an accident in the earthquake scene, where a chandelier fell on her.^[1]
Four months, a then-unprecedented length of time, were required to recreate the disaster.^[1]
Lubin Studio reused some of its own 1906 newsreel footage of the quake aftermath. Most of the Lubin newsreel footage was destroyed in a later film vault fire.^[1]

This film was long thought to be a lost film, with no prints known to exist.^[2] In 2015, the film was restored by EYE Film Institute Netherlands from three incomplete prints from the EYE Film Institute, the British Film Institute, and the Museum of Modern Art. The restored print was premiered on 28 March 2015 at EyeMuseum.^[3]

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