A Child for Sale

Charles Stoddard (played by Hale) 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 for $1,000 to a childless rich woman. He soon comes to his senses however, and backs out of the deal. From there, the story takes a number of twists and turns involving Ruth Gardner (Leslie) (the wife of Dr. Gardner who treats Stoddard's child for illness) and Ruth's parents -- whose father is also Stoddard's landlord and mother is later revealed to be Stoddard's long-lost mother from a prior marriage.[3]

• Gladys Leslie as Ruth Gardner
• Creighton Hale as Charles Stoddard
• Bobby Connelly as Walter Stoddard (Charles' son)
• Julia Swayne Gordon as Paula Harrison
• William H. Tooker as William Harrison
• Anna Lehr as Catherine Bell (Dr. Gardner's nurse)
• William B. Davidson as Dr. Gardner
• "Baby" Ruth Sullivan as Sylvia Stoddard (Charles' daughter)

Advertisement in the Reading Eagle, October 29, 1920

The ad campaign for the film included a faux advertisement for selling a child.[4][5][6]

Critic Burns Mantle noted some shortcomings of the film in his review of the "melodramatic opus" in Photoplay,[7] stating that "Ivan Abramson's idea of what constitutes a coherent and convincing dramatic story, taking this picture as a sample, offer many opportunities for the raucous hoot and the mirthful snort. ...His picture is an inartistic jumble of unrelated incidents to me ..." Other contemporary reviews were of a more non-specific and generally positive nature, such as the review by the New York Clipper which described the picture as "intensely interesting from start to finish."[3]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to A Child for Sale.

• A Child for Sale at IMDb
• A Child for Sale at American Film Institute