The 31 Oct 1914 Motion Picture News announced that Broadway stage actress Mabel Taliaferro had signed with B. A. Rolfe Photo Plays, Inc., to star in her first motion picture, an adaptation of the popular stage play The Three of Us. Two weeks later, the 14 Nov 1914 issue of Motography (released on 7 Nov) reported that shooting was set to begin the following week. “The intensely dramatic scenes of the play laid in the mining region will be taken in Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, while the interiors will be taken in New York.” More specifically, interiors were filmed at the Rolfe studios in Yonkers, NY, the 12 Dec 1914 New York Clipper mentioned. The role of “Rhy MacChesney” called for a familiarity with horses. “She rides, and on one occasion there is a spirited race with a railroad train,” the 21 Nov 1914 Motion Picture News noted; as the 5 Dec 1914 New York Clipper revealed, Taliaferro was a good fit. “She is, in private life, quite at home on the back of a thoroughbred, and so the long race over the mountain to save the mine, ‘The Three of Us,’ was nothing strange to her.”
       For the film’s finale, according to the aforementioned New York Clipper item, dynamite was used to blow a hole in one of Mauch Chunk’s rugged mountainsides. “The explosion was real before the cameras—so real, in fact, that none of the characters was permitted to figure in the scene.”
       Reviewer Clifford H. Pangburn, writing in the 2 Jan 1915 Motion Picture News, commented that the mining location in eastern Pennsylvania’s Poconos “does not resemble the mining region of Colorado very closely, but considering the limitations imposed by taking the picture in the East, John W. Noble, the director, has accomplished wonders in exterior effects.” Pangburn also praised the fight between hero “Steve Towney” and villain “Louis Beresford,” which he called “the most realistic” he had seen in some time, “and is bound to have any audience on the edge of the seats.” Hanford C. Judson, reviewer for the 2 Jan 1915 Moving Picture World, added, “they really break the cabin up.”
       Other early films shot in the picturesque mining town of Mauch Chunk, PA, were Circular Panorama of Mauch Chunk, Penna. (1901), Panoramic View of Switchback, Mauch Chunk (1902), and Loading a Train with Stone (1903, see entries). The 1970 motion picture The Molly Maguires (see entry) was also filmed there. In 1953, Mauch Chunk changed its name to Jim Thorpe, in honor of the Olympic champion.