Fred NibloFilmography

Life with Henry

Actors: Jackie Cooper, Leila Ernst, Eddie Bracken, Hedda Hopper

Synopsis: The box-office success of Paramount's What a Life (1939), coupled with the popularity of the spinoff Henry Aldrich radio series, inspired the studio to launch an "Aldrich" series of its own. The inagural entry was Life with Henry, with Jackie Cooper repeating his role as befuddled teenager Henry Read More

I'm Still Alive

Actors: Kent Taylor, Linda Hayes, Howard Da Silva, Ralph Morgan, Donald Dillaway

Synopsis: This romance chronicles the relationship between a stuntman and his movie star wife. When a colleague of his is killed on a movie set, his wife becomes afraid for her husband. This creates marital tension and the two separate. Eventually his buddies conspire to reunite them. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Read More

Ellery Queen. Master Detective

Actors: Ralph Bellamy, Margaret Lindsay, Charles Grapewin, James Burke, Michael Whalen

Synopsis: Ralph Bellamy made the first of four appearances as fictional sleuth Ellery Queen in Columbia's Ellery Queen, Master Detective. For reasons that defy logic, the studio elected to transform the brilliant, analytical Queen into a hopeless bumbler, who seems incapable of tying his own shoes, much Read More

Hell's Kitchen

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Billy Halop, Bobby Jordan, Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Gabriel Dell

Synopsis: In this entry in the long-running series, the Dead End Kids are freshly out of reform school when they find themselves victimized by the tough, corrupt head of the Hell's Kitchen Shelter. A reformed racketeer tries to help out, but he winds up violating his parole and getting sent back to prison. Read More

Fugitive Lady

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Neil Hamilton, Florence Rice, Donald Cook, Clara Blandick, Nella Walker

Synopsis: In this thriller, a young woman marries a dashing young man who, unbeknownst to her, is a jewel thief. After his latest job, he takes off and leaves her to take the rap. In court she is found guilty. She is riding a train en route to prison when the train crashes. Her identity is confused with Read More

Wives Beware

Crew: Director

Actors: Adolphe Menjou, Margaret Bannerman, Jane Baxter, Claud Allister, Renee Ray

Blame the Woman

Crew: Director

Actors: Adolphe Menjou, Benita Hume, Kenneth Kove, Claud Allister, Desmond Jeans

Synopsis: American film star Adolphe Menjou crossed the Atlantic to England to appear in Blame the Woman. Menjou and Claude Allister play a pair of sharpsters who prey upon eligible wealthy ladies. Priding himself on his ability to charm any woman out of her hard-earned diamonds, Menjou is himself Read More

Young Donovan's Kid

Crew: Director

Actors: Richard Dix, Jackie Cooper, Marion Shilling, Frank Sheridan, Boris Karloff

Synopsis: In this crime drama, a crime lord adopts the little brother of a slain colleague. Later a child-care inspector intervenes, deems the gangster a bad influence, and takes the lad away from him. The gangster is outraged and begins an unequaled crime spree until a local minister's daughter convinces Read More

The Big Gamble

Crew: Director

Actors: Dorothy Sebastian, Warner Oland, William Collier, Jr., James Gleason

Synopsis: Previously filmed in 1926 as Red Dice, The Big Gamble stars future "Hopalong Cassidy" Bill Boyd as a heavily-in-debt gambler. The suicidal Boyd makes a deal with mobster Warner Oland, whereby Oland will collect Boyd's huge insurance policy--provided he facilitates the gambler's entry into The Next Read More

Free and Easy

Actors: Buster Keaton, Anita Page, Trixie Friganza, Robert Montgomery, Fred Niblo

Synopsis: Buster Keaton's talkie debut (discounting his non-speaking guest appearance in Hollywood Revue of 1929) was Free and Easy, an uneven but generally amusing comedy with a Hollywood setting. When pretty Elvira (Anita Page) of Gopher City, Kansas wins a beauty contest, her prize includes a trip to Read More

Redemption

Crew: Director

Actors: John Gilbert, Conrad Nagel, Eleanor Boardman, Renée Adorée, Claire McDowell

Synopsis: Based on Leo Tolstoy's The Living Corpse, this film was originally scheduled as John Gilbert's first talkie, but it was held from release until distribution of his second, One Glorious Night. In the story, the Enoch Arden-style hero, long-presumed dead, commits suicide rather than ruin the Read More

Way Out West

Crew: Director

Actors: William Haines, Leila Hyams, Cliff Edwards

Synopsis: A pleasant enough western parody starring one of the victims of sound, William Haines, Way Out West is the story of a carnival huckster forced to work on a western ranch in order to repay a couple of cowboys he once fleeced. There's a sandstorm, a fist-fight with the ubiquitous crooked foreman (Charles Middleton Read More

The Mysterious Lady

Crew: Director

Actors: Greta Garbo, Conrad Nagel, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Edward Connelly, Richard Alexander

Synopsis: Based on a lugubrious novel by Ludwig Wolff, The Mysterious Lady is a romance/espionage tailored to the talents of Greta Garbo. The divine Miss G plays an alluring Russian spy, directly answerable to satanic-featured general Gustav von Seyffertitz. While she's accustomed to fomenting suicides and Read More

Dream of Love

Crew: Director

Actors: Joan Crawford, Nils Asther, Aileen Pringle, Warner Oland, Carmel Myers

Synopsis: The venerable French stage drama Adrienne Lecouvreur was redressed by MGM as the Joan Crawford vehicle Dream of Love. It's a rags-to-riches yarn, as a fiery gypsy girl (Crawford) becomes an internationally popular actress. Loved by thousands of fans, Adrienne Lecouvreur is unable to find true love Read More

Two Lovers

Crew: Director

Actors: Ronald Colman, Vilma Banky, Noah Beery, Sr., Nigel de Brulier, Virginia Bradford

Synopsis: Another of Goldwyn's successful pairings of Ronald Colman and Vilma Banky, Two Lovers was the last of their co-starring assignments. Set during the 16th-century Spanish occupation of Flanders, the story concentrates on the fiercely patriotic Mark Van Ryke (Colman). Donning the guise of Read More

Camille

Crew: Director

Actors: Norma Talmadge, Gilbert Roland, Lilyan Tashman, Maurice Costello, Harvey Clark

Synopsis: This was the most popular of the many silent adaptations of Alexandre Dumas' famous story of a courtesan who finds true love too late. In this version, a man who has been suffering from a bout of depression buys a painting of a beautiful women and discovers that her diary is included in the deal. Read More

Devil Dancer

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Gilda Gray, Clive Brook, Michael Vavitch

Synopsis: Hip-swinging danseuse Gilda Gray, the girl who created the late-'20s dance craze "The Shimmy," plays the provocatively underdressed title character in The Devil Dancer. Written by Alice Duer Miller, this the story of Takia (Gray), a white girl brought up in a remote oriental Lamasery. English Read More

The Enemy

Crew: Director

Actors: Lillian Gish, Ralph Forbes, Ralph Emerson, Frank Currier, George Fawcett

Synopsis: The Enemy was based on the rabidly anti-war play by Channing Pollock. Lillian Gish plays Pauli Amdt, the granddaughter of August Behrend (George Fawcett), a pacifistic Viennese schoolteacher. Pauli marries student Carl Behrend (Ralph Forbes), who almost immediately thereafter marches off to World Read More

The Temptress

Crew: Director

Actors: Greta Garbo, Antonio Moreno, Roy D'Arcy, Marc MacDermott, Lionel Barrymore

Synopsis: The Temptress was Greta Garbo's second American film, and while it may strike modern viewers as excessively melodramatic, Garbo is always worth watching. The star plays Elena, the wife of Monsieur Canterac (Lionel Barrymore) -- and the mistress of rich Parisian banker Monsieur Fontenoy (Marc MacDermott Read More

Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

Crew: Director

Actors: Ramon Novarro, Francis X. Bushman, May McAvoy, Betty Bronson, Claire McDowell, Kathleen Key, Carmel Myers

Synopsis: The advertising tag "four years in the making" is usually so much press-agent puffery. In the case of the 1926 silent version of Ben Hur, it was the unvarnished truth--and the filmmakers had the scars to prove it. The story behind the film is now part of Hollywood folklore: the cast and production Read More

Red Lily

Crew: Director, Screen Story, Screenwriter

Actors: Enid Bennett, Ramon Novarro, Wallace Beery, Frank Currier, Rosemary Theby

Synopsis: After the death of her father, Marise La Noue (Enid Bennett) can find no safe haven, so she runs off to Paris with Jean Leonnec, the mayor's son (Ramon Novarro). Before they can be married, however, they are separated. Marise sinks from working as a waitress to toiling as scrubwoman to the Read More

Thy Name Is Woman

Crew: Director

Actors: William V. Mong, Barbara La Marr, Ramon Novarro, Wallace MacDonald, Robert Edeson

Synopsis: Ramon Novarro and Barbara LaMarr, the featured players who made such an impression in The Prisoner of Zenda, reunite in this drama as stars. Juan Ricardo (Novarro) is a soldier in the Spanish army. He is offered a promotion to sergeant if he will seduce Guerrita (LaMarr), the young wife of Pedro Read More

Souls for Sale

Actors: Eleanor Boardman, Mae Busch, Barbara La Marr, Richard Dix, Frank Mayo

Synopsis: This comedy-melodrama, based on the novel by Rupert Hughes (who also directed), blends fiction and reality to tell the story of a young woman's rise in Hollywood; the film uses real stars and productions (even Charles Chaplin filming A Woman of Paris) as its backdrop. Eleanor Boardman plays Read More

Strangers of the Night

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Matt Moore, Enid Bennett, Barbara La Marr, Robert McKim, Mathilde Brundage

Synopsis: In the early 1920s Fred Niblo was known for directing adventure films -- he had already done Mark of Zorro and The Three Musketeers for Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and would soon be put into service for Ben Hur -- so he was a natural choice to helm this swashbuckling picture based on the play Captain Read More

Famous Mrs. Fair

Crew: Director

Actors: Myrtle Stedman, Huntly Gordon, Marguerite de la Motte, Cullen Landis, Ward Crane

Synopsis: This "real life" drama starred some of the best second-string talent at Metro, and first-class screenwriter Frances Marion adapted the story from a stage play by James Forbes. When the world war (meaning World War I -- there was only one back then) breaks out, Mrs. Fair (Myrtle Stedman) goes to Read More

Scandalous Tongues

Rose O' the Sea

Crew: Director

Actors: Anita Stewart, Rudolph Cameron, Thomas Holding, Margaret Landis, Kate Lester

Synopsis: This comedy-drama starring Anita Stewart was unusual in that instead of marrying the handsome leading man, the heroine winds up with his father. As an infant, Rose (Stewart) was cast onshore after a shipwreck and taken in by an old sailor. The sailor raises her, and after his death, Rose goes to Read More

Blood and Sand

Crew: Director

Actors: Rudolph Valentino, Lila Lee, Nita Naldi, George Field, Walter Long

Synopsis: Both animal and human nostrils flare, and passion reigns in this classic romantic tragedy with Rudolph Valentino. Valentino is Juan Gallarde, an aspiring bullfighter, married to his loving childhood sweetheart Carmen (Lila Lee). But as his fame rises as a matador, so does his hot Spanish blood Read More

Woman He Married

Crew: Director

Actors: Anita Stewart, Darrel Foss, William Conklin, Shannon Day

Synopsis: Wealthy Julia Long (Mabel Trunelle) is in love with a poor boy, but Julia's snobbish mother (Helen Strickland) forces her into a loveless marriage with millionaire George Bender (Robert Connesse). Out of boredom, Julia begins taking singing lessons, and before long she has fallen in love with her Read More

The Three Musketeers

Crew: Director

Actors: Douglas Fairbanks, Leon Bary, George Siegmann, Eugene Pallette, Marguerite de la Motte, Boyd Irwin

Synopsis: Douglas Fairbanks' longest and most elaborate production up to 1921, The Three Musketeers was Fairbanks' first full-blown costume adventure (his modestly produced 1920 The Mark of Zorro was regarded as an extension of his breezy contemporary comedies). Fairbanks assumes the leading role of Read More

Hairpins

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Hairpins stars Enid Bennett as Muriel Rossmore, a housewife who has let her appearance go to seed. Muriel's husband Rex (Matt Moore), turned off by his wife's dowdy appearance, begins casting about for newer, prettier female companionship. At this point, the audience is way ahead of the game Read More

Sex

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Not only does Louise Glaum perform a seductive "Spider Dance" in this provocatively titled but deeply moralistic melodrama, she also hosts gay parties where stage-door johnnies drink out of women's slippers and scantily clad chorines slide down banisters, their undergarments visible to all and Read More

Greater Than Love

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Grace Merrill (the vampy Louise Glaum) works as a shill in a gambling hall. Her five roommates are even less honestly employed. One of them, Elsie Brown (Patricia Palmer) commits suicide because her main squeeze, Frank Norwood (Edward Martindel) has left her. Elsie's small town mother (Gertrude Claire Read More

The Mark of Zorro

Crew: Director

Actors: Douglas Fairbanks

Synopsis: Johnston MacCulley's 1913 adventure yarn The Curse of Capistrano was given its first filmization in Douglas Fairbanks' 1920 The Mark of Zorro. Fairbanks plays the outwardly foppish Don Diego de la Vega, the son of wealthy Spanish Californian rancher. In reality, Don Diego is the dashed Read More

Her Husband's Friend

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Too preoccupied with business matters to entertain his restless young wife Blanche (Lillian Kemble, Robert Probet (Frank Mills) prevails upon his best friend William Martindale (J. Frank Glendon) to take Blanche out from time to time. Martindale interprets this as an invitation to put the moves on Read More

Stepping Out

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Housewife June Hillary (Enid Bennett) has become a drudge; her husband Robert (Niles Welch) is a bank clerk who makes 25 dollars a week. A pretty new stenographer at work, Lillian Nicholls (Julia Faye), catches Robert's eye, and he begins to neglect June. When she complains about this, he points Read More

Dangerous Hours

Crew: Director

Synopsis: This drama, which was based on a Saturday Evening Post story, paints a particularly black portrait of "Reds," or Bolsheviks. Doctor King (Walt Whitman) has sacrificed nearly everything to send his boy to college, but John (Lloyd Hughes) throws it all away to align himself with his Bolshevik Read More

What Every Woman Learns

Crew: Director

Synopsis: In spite of solid casting, which includes luminaries such as Milton Sills, Irving Cummings and Theodore Roberts, this melodrama is a lesser vehicle for the husband/wife, director/star team of Fred Niblo and Enid Bennett. When Peter Fortesque (Roberts) dies, he admonishes his granddaughter Amy Read More

Virtuous Thief

Crew: Director

Synopsis: In a moment of temptation, Dick Armitage (Lloyd Hughes) steals from his boss, Walter Haskell (William Conklin). He decides to come clean and writes a confession, but Haskell, a stern taskmaster, insists that the money be returned in three days. To save her brother, Shirley Armitage (Enid Bennett) Read More

Haunted Bedroom

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Newspaperwoman Betsy Thorne (Enid Bennett) is sent to investigate a mysterious situation -- a woman, Dolores Arnold (Dorcas Mathews), has rented a supposedly haunted mansion, and her brother Daniel (Jack Nelson) has vanished. Disguised as a maid, Betsy finds out that Dolores is supposed to marry Read More

Law of Men

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Although the plot to this melodrama is pretty routine -- a man wrongly accused of murder is convicted but then proven innocent -- the ending has a nice twist. Unfortunately, the story's executed rather awkwardly by director Fred Niblo, who bestows a few too many close-ups on his star, Enid Read More

Marriage Ring

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Produced by Thomas H. Ince, The Marriage Ring was tailored to the talents of Enid Bennett and was directed by the star's then husband Fred Niblo. Like many WWI-era films, the plotline is based upon the assumption that a large and insidious German spy network existing in the USA -- and in this Read More

When Do We Eat?

Crew: Director

Synopsis: In this comedy/melodrama, Enid Bennett plays Nora, an actress with a struggling touring company. While they are performing Uncle Tom's Cabin in a horrible little Texas town, the sheriff comes in with an attachment against the show. Nora, dressed as Little Eva, escapes and hops a freight train. An Read More

Fuss and Feathers

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Prospector Pete Baldwin (John P. Lockney) and his daughter Susie (Enid Bennett) finally strike it rich. A mining promoter, Martin Ledyard (Charles French), has them come to San Francisco so he can buy their claim. Mrs. Ledyard (Sylvia Ashton) is disgusted by the Baldwins' crude table manners and Read More