A Jewish writer in Czarist Russia is forced to flee when the government comes after him for his "objectionable" writings. He emigrates to the US, where he settles in New York City's Lower East Side.
Vacationing in the Canadian Northwest, a playwright and a songwriter both fall in love with Marie Cleste and take her back with them to New York when her father and her sweetheart apparently die in a forest fire. (The father did perish; the sweetheart escaped, crippled, with his blinded Indian guide into the forest to hide his infirmities.)
A trio of former sideshow performers double as the "Unholy Three" in a scam to nab some shiny rocks.
In this war drama, a brave reporter tries to remain detached while covering the war in Shanghai. While there, he falls for an ex-streetwalker, but must compete with a mercenary pilot for her love. By the end, the correspondent loses his objectivity after he helps the pilot save the woman from the enemy. The rescue costs the pilot his life.
An old skipper, Captain Davis, has as his companions two derelicts -- one, Huish, is a Cockney, and the other, Robert Herrick was once a gentleman. In Tahiti they board a schooner and a storm takes them to an uncharted island. Living there is pearl broker Richard Attwater, and his daughter Ruth. Attwater is bitter because a supposed friend stole his wife and he has sworn to wreak vengeance on any white man he happens to encounter. Davis and Huish want to get their hands on his pearls, while, Herrick falls in love with the man's daughter.
A penniless artist moves into an abandoned house, but is discovered by the daughter of its former owner.
Playboy Teddy Ward wants to marry Jeannie King, an artist, but his father wants him to marry Loris Lane, but tells Teddy he can marry whom he pleases if he will make the Mountain Inn a profitable operation. Teddy agrees, and with the support of his friends arranges an ice-boat race with a $10,000 prize to the winner. A problem arises when his father refuses to pay such an amount. Teddy thinks one of his friends will win the race and refuse the prize, but champion racer "Duke" Slade shows up and Teddy knows he will take the money. Some movie stars show up and, while using their own names, are definitely not playing "Self" in this fictional film.
Vengeful husband pursues, kidnaps his wife aboard a deserted ship when he becomes injured and taken aboard, then sinks in a collision following a fight with the captain for his wife. Stars real life husband-wife James Kirkwood, Lila Lee.
Because he wants a promotion, Tom Blackford marries Alice Rand, the daughter of his boss, John Rand. Rand is aware of Blackford's motivations and he sends him to take over as superintendent of one of the company's mines in the hopes that he will fail.
Documentary short film depicting the filmmaking activity at the Paramount Studios in Hollywood, featuring dozens of stars captured candidly and at work.
When an aristocratic family and their servants are shipwrecked, the butler becomes their ruler.
A doctor is driven into an investigation of sinister goings-on at a horse race track by his mystery writer ex-wife.
Young Scooter O’Neal, orphaned after his father’s suicide, is sent out West to live with family friend Dobe Jones. Unaware of his father’s fate Scooter longs to return to his home in Chicago especially after discovering Dobe is an embittered ranch hand hellbent on seeking revenge on his duplicitous wife Eleanor and the man she ran off with. Dobe is dogged in his pursuit until he unwittingly puts Scooter’s life in danger. Seeing the error of his ways the pair ride off together in search of a new adventure.
A documentary of Hollywood's first great Latin Lover, the contradictions in his personal life, and his premature death.
Money was what gangster Vince M. Falcone wanted most and he did lay hands on millions of dollars by fair means or (mostly) foul. But once he became rich what he craved for was respectability. So why not marry a lovely society lady? And with a young daughter as a bonus Mister Falcone could show off among the creme de la creme. Of course when times got rough he felt free to desert his wife and little girl. Fortunately Taps, a lawyer working for the underworld, will console them both.
Juan is the son of a poor widow in Seville. Against his mother's wishes he pursues a career as toreador. He rapidly gains national prominence, and takes his childhood sweetheart Carmen as his bride. He meets the Marquis' daughter Doña Sol and finds himself in the awkward position of being in love with two women, which threatens the stability of his family and his position in society. He finds interesting parallels in the life of the infamous bandit Plumitas when they eventually meet by chance.
Young Jack Wright offers his hand in marriage to the winner of a lottery, but after committing to the winner falls in love with another woman.
Austin Bevans, a lively car-salesman, suddenly finds himself heir to the Bevans School for Girls. Since Austin feels that acquiring grace and charm are more important to a young girl than acquiring knowledge, academic courses are dropped, and a charm school emerges. He submits to the charms of Elsie, a student at the school, whose grandfather takes him into his employ after a newly discovered will dispossesses him of the school. Elsie resents Austin for accepting a job with those who formerly thought him undesirable, but later she relents and takes him back.
Angela comes to Hollywood with only two things: Her dream to become a movie star, and Grandpa. She leaves an Aunt, a brother, Grandma, and her longtime boyfriend back in Centerville. Despite seeing major movie stars around every corner, and knocking on every casting office door in town, at the end of her first day she is still unemployed. To her horror, when she arrives back at their hotel, she finds that Grandpa has been cast in a movie by William DeMille and quickly becomes a star during the ensuing weeks. Her family, worried that Angela and Grandpa are getting into trouble, come to Hollywood to drag them back home. In short order Aunt, Grandma, brother, boyfriend and even the parrot become superstars, but Angela is still unemployed...
A policeman in need of money is persuaded to take a $1000 bribe to stay away the night a packing house is to be robbed.
A reporter runs into a pretty young girl who has inherited her father's failing business. She wants to give it up, but he tries to convince her to make a go of it.
A motorcycle policeman's partner is deliberately run off the road and killed by a member of a syndicate that controls the gambling--and much of the justice system--in his town. When the killer is freed because of perjured testimony and the corrupt legal system, the dead officer's partner quits the force and vows to bring the killer to justice.
A young British girl born and raised in India loses her neglectful parents in an earthquake. She is returned to England to live at her uncle's estate. Her uncle is very distant due to the loss of his wife ten years before. Neglected once again, she begins exploring the estate and discovers a garden that has been locked and neglected.
A corrupt art patron finds himself in love with the same girl as his stepson.
Two Marine pilots in love with the same girl are assigned a mission to find a notorious bandit in Nicaragua. This early talkie from director Frank Capra, released in 1929, stars Jack Holt, Ralph Graves and Lila Lee.
An ex-convict, unable to get a good job because of his prison record, gets mixed up in a phony stock scam.
Darby Clyde Fenster and Jerry Martin are a pair of penniless nincompoop-drifters who hop a freight train on their way to Florida. Our intrepid heroes find themselves facing one comic situation after another in this gloriously loopy Southern fried comedy-with-music.
Professor John Sylvestus Applegate has been dismissed from his college teaching position for objecting too loudly to the predominant part that football and other sports play in the curriculum, and soon finds himself dead broke when publishers show no interest in the dry material he brings to them. He meets a young boy, Laury and his mother, Sharon in the park and is quite taken with them. He gets a job-prospect letter, as a private tutor, and applies at once. His employer is Mr. Morley, a surly, sour, mean-tempered old man who informs John he is to act as a tutor for his grandson, who turns out to be Laury. Sharon, Morleys daughter had eloped against her father's wishes and was abandoned by her husband after Laury's birth.
The daughter of a wealthy industrialist wants to take over the company when her father retires, but the father--an old-fashioned sort who doesn't believe that "girls" belong in business--is planning on leaving the company to her wastrel playboy brother. In order to prove to her dad that she can handle the job, she disguises herself as an ordinary "working girl" and gets a job in her dad's plant. There she meets and falls in love with a clerk. She brings the young man home to meet her folks, but during the evening the family safe is robbed, and all signs point to her new boyfriend.
After being run out of town after town for trying to sell worthless stock, two con artists breeze into the small town of Chesterville, where they find themselves accused of kidnapping a young boy to whom they offered a ride. When that misunderstanding is cleared up, the two conmen hatch a plot to unload all their worthless paper on the gullible citizens of Chesterville.
An adaptation of Madame Bovary transported to Rye, New York in the 1930's. All characters have been renamed.
An ex-convict tries to connect with the daughter who doesn't even know he exists.
The philandering Dr. Silas Brenton is fired from his position at a large hospital and given 24 hours to vacate the state. He sets himself up in Chicago as a "prestigious" plastic surgeon to the stars. However, Brenton's silver tongue can't cover up his dubious methods, and an investigation into his practice is launched by the examining board of plastic surgeons. A delirious film à clef based on the loathsome career of Henry J. Schireson, the self-styled “King of Quacks”.
Because Bob Meredith (Jack Holt) spends all his time working, his wife Margaret (Lois Wilson) feels the romance has ebbed away from their marriage. One night, while Meredith is at the office, family friend Julian Osborn (Conrad Nagel) -- whose own spouse (Lila Lee) is out of town -takes Margaret to a dance. They wind up at a hunting lodge and begin to get carried away, but stop before things get out of hand. The pair agree to keep their encounter a secret, but unfortunately, they've been seen and word gets back to their spouses.
During World War I a vaudeville entertainer, Mickey, is helping to recruit officers for the army and finds himself in the service along with his female partner, who is also his girlfriend. At training camp he comes up against Top Sergeant Mulligan, who proceeds to make life miserable for him. If that wasn't enough, it turns out that Mulligan, the captain and a YMCA worker are all making a play for his girlfriend.
Elna Curry, once a concert pianist, develops an unfounded jealousy of neighbor, Trudie Morrow. Elna who suffers from neurasthenia, believes that Trudie is having an affair with her husband, John, and vows revenge on Trudie. John explains to Trudie Elna's condition and plan. Trudie, being good-hearted tells John that she'll move. One evening, John returns late from work to discover Elna dead. John burns Elna's suicide note to protect Trudie. This results in John being charged for murder and put on trial.
Now hear this. The studio that gave the cinema its voice offered 1929 audiences a chance to see and hear multiple silent-screen favorites for the first time in a gaudy, grandiose music-comedy-novelty revue that also included Talkie stars, Broadway luminaries and of course, Rin-Tin-Tin. Frank Fay hosts a jamboree that, among its 70+ stars, features bicyclers, boxing champ Georges Carpentier, chorines in terpsichore kickery, sister acts, Myrna Loy in two-strip Technicolor as an exotic Far East beauty, John Barrymore in a Shakespearean soliloquy (adding an on-screen voice to his legendary profile for the first time) and Winnie Lightner famously warbling the joys of Singing in the Bathtub. Watch, rinse, repeat!
A murder is committed aboard a cruise ship just before it sinks in a storm. The survivors, including the killer, land on a mysterious jungle island.
Any movie that starts Jewish entertainer George Jessel as an Italian accordionist named Luigi can't be all bad. In love with the beautiful Margharita (Lila Lee), Luigi lands a job in the music store owned by the girl's uncle. Ultimately, however, our hero does the Pagliacci act when Margharita evinces a preference for handsome Pasquale (David Rollins). The film's best scene takes place in a nursery full of talented tots, a sequence that undoubtedly reminded Jessel of his days with Gus Edwards' "Schoolroom" act. Exercising his droit du seigneur, Georgie Jessel sings the title tune.
Tom Kelly, a small-town baseball pitcher, is sent to a minor-league team in Florida, and fails to make the team. He starts dabbling in real estate, in the midst of the Florida land boom (in which a lot of the land sold was under water), makes a fortune and buys into the team that cut him from its roster.
American law clerks Anthony Hamilton Hawthorne and Rodney Blake are nearly broke in Monte Carlo when Hawthorne breaks the bank. While driving through the impoverished kingdom of Bovinia, Hawthorne falls in love with a woman he meets when he retrieves his blown-off cap. Deciding to stay, Hawthorne is persuaded to finance a revolution until he learns that the woman he loves is Princess Irma and that she is in danger of being assassinated.
This is a straight version of the old fairy tale, with John Carradine as the Emperor. It was filmed in South Florida, with exteriors in Coral Gables and Miami's Vizcaya. The hero bests the villainous efforts of two scheming tailors who convince the vain king that their clothes are so marvelous that only smart people can see them.
Young David Carroll takes over the publication of a local newspaper in Vermont. Although he is attracted to Dot, "the most sophisticated girl in town," he marries Allie Parker, daughter of the couple who run the boardinghouse where he lives. Allie remains at home when David goes to New York City to sell a musical he has written. There, Dot, now a successful costume designer, uses her influence to get David's play produced. David and Dot fall in love, but she leaves for Paris when David indicates he will remain true to Allie. He sends for Allie, but when she arrives with her whole family, he decides to follow Dot to Paris.
A series of murders that take place in an old, dark mansion are suspected of being committed by an ape. (lost film)
Joe and Lucky travel around New England painting barns in exchange for an advertisement on one side. The meet Madge, who is cruelly treated by a her father who plans to marry her off to someone she despises.
Based on the comic strip character and his auto obsessed life.
Hijinks surrounding the attendance of a Prince at a Yacht Club dinner.
Unreleased in America, this was one of Arbuckle's last starring roles in a feature film.
A doctor who believes he can cure criminals takes on a big challenge.
A pearl stolen from an Indian idol results in nothing but trouble for its owner. After he receives death threats by note pinned to a dagger, he decides to gather his relatives in his old mansion for a reading of his will. Unfortunately, the family members are being mysteriously bumped off one by one. The butler and an heiress set out to discover what's going on.
Inventor Harry Harper travels to the South Seas, where there is buried treasure belonging to a girl, Beverly West. Naturally, others are after the loot, and Beverly's father is being held captive by cannibals until she returns to them with a pearl that belongs to one of their idols. The climax consists of Harper saving Beverly from a safe which has been lowered into the sea.
The wealthy owner of an iron foundry dies, and his greedy heirs are outraged when they find out that he left his entire estate not to them but to the foreman of his foundry.
A gangster falls in love with the daughter of a former colleague who has quit the rackets. However, things aren't exactly what they appear to be.
A multimillionaire is murdered, and his will leaves all his money to a beautiful young blonde. The murdered man's son thinks something is fishy, and a homicide cop sets out to find out who was behind the man's death. Complications ensue.
A policeman doubles as a gunman to get in with the mob.
The two leading ladies are cast as Prudence and Agatha, a pair of old-fashioned schoolteachers in an old-fashioned small town. Disdaining the wimpy theories of "progressive" education, Prudence and Agatha stick to the reliable "Three R's," often teaching to the tune of a hickory stick. Though ridiculed for their so-called outmoded methods, the heroines manage to turn out quite a few prize students, earning the undying gratitude of the local citizenry.
Believing they can make a ton of money, a gang of opportunists uses the country's racial and ethnic tensions to start a Ku Klux Klan-type organization.
Ex-convict David Harvey attempts to go straight and settles in a small town where he meets and falls in love with Mary Carlyle. His former gang tries to persuade him to take part in a robbery of a wealthy woman but he refuses until discovering that Mary is in league with the gang.
Nightclub hostess Sophie Leonard educates her daughter Beth abroad and keeps her life secret for her. But suddenly the daughter shows up.
Ellen, a young American girl who married a European prince and moved to his country, is preparing to return to the US, after having paid off all the debts left by her now-deceased husband. However, when she returns early, no one recognizes her and even her aunt Kate mistakes her for the princess' dressmaker. Her ex-boyfriend Joe, who recognizes her immediately, suggests that Ellen continue with the charade and have some fun, but a series of misunderstandings causes trouble for her.
Irked by the success of a brassy nightclub owner. her rivals set out to drive her out of business, and frame her for a murder in the bargain.
A young man and his manservant, escaping from a backwoods family feud, are persuaded by a beautiful young heiress to help her rid her newly-gained Spanish castle of ghosts.
After many outrageous moments, a young girl marries her former acquaintance, not with her fiancee.
Disgusted with his spendthrift son, Kirk Anthony's father has Kirk shanghaied and taken to Panama, where he attracts the attention of Mrs. Edith Cortlandt. He subsequently falls in love with Chiquita, the daughter of a Panamanian general, gets a railroad job through Stephen Cortlandt and decides to make something of himself when he meets Allen Allan, a black mercenary. Stephen Cortlandt's death is blamed on Kirk until Edith produces a suicide note. He succeeds in his railroad position and returns to the United States with Chiquita to ask his father's forgiveness. A lost film.
At sight of a woman, he got a ticket for speeding.
Ed Simpson has been raised in an orphanage where he has caused much trouble. He can't stand living there anymore and runs away. On the streets, he finds a friend in newsboy Mike. Mike teaches him how to survive, but inevitably Ed gets hauled into court. The judge sees potential in him and hands him over to be adopted by a young politician.
This film, believed lost, was based on William Vaughn Moody's 1906 play The Great Divide. The story was filmed as a silent film by MGM as The Great Divide (1925) and as an early silent/sound hybrid by First National also called The Great Divide (1929). Judith Temple has come West to Arizona for some excitement. As she says goodbye to her brother and his wife, who are returning to the East, Dr. Neil Cranford, who is in love with her, is called away to tend the broken ribs of a man injured in a barroom brawl.
After the Show was adapted from Rita Weiman's story "The Stage Door." Lila Lee plays Eileen, a starry-eyed young girl employed as a chorus dancer in New York. Eileen can never be certain if the men in her life are sincere, or if they perceive her as mere temporary plaything. Among the "stage door johnnies," "tired businessmen" and "sugar daddies" surrounding Eileen are Jack Holt and Carlton S. King.
Stars Edmund Lowe as WWI veteran Slim Paris. Though most of his comrades died in battle, Paris returns home with nary a scratch. This convinces him that his life has a "greater purpose" in the scheme of things, so he sets about to find that purpose.
A man's pregnant second wife gets upset when he decides to go overseas to his young son, who may be dying of typhoid fever.
A silent romantic adventure melodrama (from the play and novel by Richard Harding) about a womanizer who follows a beautiful Hispanic woman to her home country and his adventures there. He ends up helping her father become dictator of the entire country, and is rewarded with marriage to her and he is named Minister of Finance!
A group of seven people find themselves on a ship in the middle of an endless ocean, with no recollection of how they got there. (lost film)
Colonel Maurice Taylor of the Royal Flying Corps is hopelessly injured in an airplane crash immediately following his marriage to Stella. Maurice is non-functional in most of the physical areas of marriage that count, but Stella attends to his other needs faithfully for three years. Then his brother, Colin, shows up from South America, and he and Stella fall passionately in love and are making plans to run away together. Mother Taylor is aware of the romance, as is Nurse Weyland, who is secretly in love with Maurice, and now hates Stella for her careless attitude toward Maurice's patiently-borne sufferings. Maurice is also aware of the affair. He has a talk with his wife and brother. Complications arise.
The WAMPAS Baby Stars was a promotional campaign sponsored by the United States Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers, which honored 13 (15 in 1932) young actresses each year whom they believed to be on the threshold of movie stardom. 1922 was the first.
Toughened criminal Jim Reagan tries to persuade his brother, Larry, to go straight, but Larry attempts to rob a banker, Richard Milton, and is arrested. Milton refuses to be lenient, and when Larry is killed trying to escape from prison, Jim and his wife, Molly, resolve to have vengeance.
Diana Moreland, suspecting that her husband is cheating on her with Marilyn Foster, catches the two of them having a rendezvous at a roadhouse. Instead of screaming at them, she invites Marilyn back to her home. However, Diana has prepared a test to see just who it is that her husband really loves.
Pat and Danny McGlone are identical twin brothers, rivals and competitors in everything they do, and Pat grows up and becomes a policeman while Danny turns to a life of crime. They now find themselves on the opposite sides of the law, and both are in love with a pretty Irish girl from their neighborhood, Kate Dean. Before long one has to prove that blood is thicker than water.
Ek is a disembodied spirit, required to wait his turn in the boring cosmos until he is allowed to inhabit an earthly body. Impatient, he sneaks off to earth to find a body and, after several failed attempts, finds Professor Ezra Botts, a timid old pedant and researcher of psychic phenomena. Life fairly well kicks Professor Botts around as it does all timid souls, and he gets little love or respect. But during an experimental trance, he is able to leave his body behind and at that moment, Ek sees his chance and slips in, taking over the professor's body. The "new" professor is energetic, charismatic, and dynamic, and from the limbo in which he floats, the real professor fears that Ek is going to wear out the tired old body before he, Botts, can return to it. And just how is he supposed to get back into his body, anyway?
President Franklin Roosevelt appoints a theatrical producer as the new Secretary of Amusement in order to cheer up an American public still suffering through the Depression. The new secretary soon runs afoul of political lobbyists out to destroy his department.
An artist in England is torn between an old flame and the now grown up little girl he has adopted.
When Tom Redding's wealthy father dies and it turns out that all he left Tom was a mountain of debts, all of his "friends" desert him--except young Mary Austin. Determined to get out from all his debt, Tom heads west and eventually strikes it rich with an oil well. Now wealthy, he hatches a plan to get even with his "friends" in his hometown--by pretending to return home broke but having a colleague secretly buy up as much property in town as he can.
Trying to support her twin sisters on her own, Jane Neill lands a job working for a millionaire, but problems soon arise for the young girl when she declines the marriage proposal of the always-trustworthy Micky and falls in love with the millionaire's spoiled, lazy nephew. After she inherits the millionaire's estate along with much heartache, Jane finally comes to her senses and goes back to the ever-faithful Micky.
Young Gloria O'Connell falls in love with her neighbor, James Oliver. She is sent to a small town to stay with her three spinster aunts, while James becomes a newspaper reporter and arranges to write a story on the town and its large old-maid population. James pursues overweight "Hippo" Harger, a rival for Gloria's affections, and challenges him to a duel. When James' newspaper story appears, the disgruntled old maids hunt down the author. In a fit of anger, Gloria decides to marry "Hippo," but James rescues her at the office of the justice of the peace. The youthful lovers continue their relationship with their parents' understanding.
Sailor and novelist Leonard Fayne marries wealthy Isabel Grace, whose riches hamper his creative faculties. On the suggestion of sculptress Katherine Dare, Isabel travels to Europe, leaving her husband permission to use her bank account. Leonard steadily declines in her absence and is on the verge of suicide when he meets Ella Klotz, a waif who is about to kill herself because she is going blind. He takes Ella to his studio to care for her, and believing he owes his life to the girl, Leonard once again begins to write. Meanwhile, Isabel is being pursued by an old suitor named Heminway, but realizes that she still loves her husband and returns from Europe. Heminway tries unsuccessfully to keep the couple apart.
Mr. and Mrs. Amos Saxby's silver wedding anniversary is interrupted by the surprise elopement of their daughter Margaret with bank clerk Arthur Haviland. Law student Dudley King, and rival suitor for Margaret, announces that the marriage-license clerk is on vacation and that the license obtained by the elopers is invalid; he wires the proprietor of the lodge where the couple plan to spend their honeymoon, and Arthur and his wife indignantly return home.