[5] It is available on DVD[6] and Blu-ray[6] with a score composed by Donald Sosin and Mimi Rabson and audio commentary by film historian Shelley Stamp.

[7] That meager salary must solely support her family of two parents and three sisters because her father (Harry Griffith) prefers to lie in bed reading, smoking his pipe, and drinking pails of beer rather than looking for work.

In addition to directing the film, Lois Weber composed the production's scenario, adapting it from a short story written by American author and suffragist Stella Wynne Herron.

[8] Herron, in turn, was inspired to write her dramatic tale about a poor young woman desperately needing shoes by Jane Addams' 1912 nonfiction book on prostitution, A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil.

[12] A few weeks later, after Weber finally decided to cast the inexperienced screen performer for the starring role in Shoes, the director assigned MacDonald a new surname for promoting and crediting her work: MacLaren (spelled McLaren in the film's opening title card).

[14] The trade journal The Moving Picture Weekly was one of the publications in 1916 that described the principal sets used on Shoes: The production is made with all the skill and attention to detail which we have learned to expect from Lois Weber.

"[17] Grace Kingsley, reviewing the film on behalf of the Los Angeles Times, heaped even greater praise on the release:Shoes showing at the Alhambra is the greatest photoplay which Lois Weber has ever produced.

[18]In Illinois, Louella Parsons, the film critic for The Chicago Herald, ranked Shoes as "one of the best moving pictures of 1916", a story that "loosens the heartstrings, stirs the pulse and makes one choke with emotion.

The Chicago Defender, one of the leading African-American newspapers in the United States, was among those periodicals promoting that benefit: "There is a lesson in this feature for every father and mother who have made themselves responsible for the welfare of a daughter—it expounds the greatest problem ever essayed in moving pictures and does it deftly, clearly and with gripping interest.

Peter Milne, the reviewer for Motion Picture News, insisted that Weber had exceeded acceptable limits for realism in depicting Eva's "trials and hardships".

"[22] Julian Johnson, writing for the leading movie-fan magazine Photoplay, summarized Weber's "remarkable play" as being "big in thought and treatment—marred by melodramatic crudities.

In 1932—sixteen years after the release of Shoes—Universal Studios produced a parody of Weber's film, converting it to a sound comedy short by re-editing original footage from the 1916 drama and using voiceovers by a "great wisecracker" to amuse theater audiences.

Motion Picture Herald, another popular film-industry publication in 1932, reports on DeMond's parody in its February 20 issue and refers directly to the original footage and to the star of Shoes but mentions nothing about Weber:Universal's Unshod Maiden created a furore when shown to a private audience of local critics and newspapermen recently, which indicates that Universal may have a gold mine in this contemplated series of short subjects burlesquing old-time films.