[Thanks to Paul Jesson for contributing.]
Extract from tcm.com written by Rob Nixon:
The silent film that Dorothy McGuire’s character watches at the beginning of The Spiral Staircase is D.W. Griffith’s The Sands of Dee (1912). It is based on the poem by Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) about a young woman who goes to call the cattle home “across the sands of Dee” but is drowned. The sign in the lobby of the hotel where the film is playing credits it as The Kiss, which has led some commentators to suggest that the clips used are actually from the 1914 film of that same title with William Desmond Taylor.
D.W. Griffith’s The Sands of Dee (1912) in Robert Siodmak’s The Spiral Staircase (1946).
