Hallam CooleyFilmography

Frisco Jenny

Actors: Ruth Chatterton, Donald Cook, Louis Calhern, Hallam Cooley

Synopsis: Jenny (Ruth Chatterton) becomes pregnant by a young man who is killed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Bearing her child in secret, Jenny gives up custody to a wealthy couple. The years pass, and through the auspices of a crooked politician (Louis Calhern), Jenny becomes the number one Read More

Sporting Blood

Actors: Clark Gable, Ernest Torrence, Madge Evans, Lew Cody, Marie Prevost

Synopsis: Clark Gable went from supporting actor to star in the space of one year with Sporting Blood, adapted from a novel by Frederick Hazlitt Brennan. Gable is top-billed as a gambling house proprietor named Rid Riddell. When the owner of a prize thoroughbred loses heavily in Riddell's establishment, he Read More

Too Many Cooks

Actors: Bert Wheeler, Dorothy Lee, Roscoe Ates, Robert McWade

Synopsis: When RKO Radio decided to split up the studio's moneymaking comedy team of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey, in hopes of earning twice as much at the box-office, the results were sad indeed. Bert Wheeler's solo venture, Too Many Cooks, is marginally better than Bob Woolsey's Everything's Rosie but Read More

Soup to Nuts

Actors: Ted Healy, Stanley Smith, Lucille Browne, Charles Winninger

Synopsis: Popular Broadway comedian Ted Healy (sort of a Milton Berle without the charm) was tapped for potential movie stardom by Fox Studios, who cast Healy in the wacky semi-musical comedy Soup to Nuts. The film was written by comic-strip artist Rube Goldberg (who also appears in the film), utilizing Read More

What Men Want

Synopsis: In this drama, a suave playboy gets jealous when his lover falls for a new man. Then the mistress' sister comes to town and real trouble begins. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Holiday

Actors: Ann Harding, Robert Ames, Mary Astor, Edward Everett Horton, Hedda Hopper

Synopsis: The first of the filmizations of Philip Barry's play, Holiday centers around a society wedding. Julia Seton (Mary Astor) intends to marry John Case (Robert Ames), a young Wall Street lion with "radical" ideas that go against the grain of Julia's conservative family. Julia's freewheeling younger Read More

Wedding Rings

Actors: H.B. Warner, Lois Wilson, Olive Borden, Hallam Cooley, James Ford

Synopsis: In this romance, two sisters fall in love with the same man. He in turn, falls for and marries the most sophisticated of the two. This sister is a gad-fly and social climber whereas her sibling is more earthy. Though she is the more glamorous girl, the husband soon tires of her and begins to fall Read More

Back Pay

Actors: Corinne Griffith, Grant Withers, Montagu Love, Hallam Cooley, Vivien Oakland

Synopsis: In this melodramatic early sound-film an innocent country gal tires of her dull pastoral life and equally boring beau so she heads for the big city in search of adventure. Instead she finds herself the kept woman of a rich war profiteer. Deep down, she still loves the country boy who has been Read More

Paris Bound

Actors: Ann Harding, Fredric March, George Irving, Hallam Cooley, Juliette Crosby

Synopsis: This drama is an adaptation of a popular 1927 play and tells the story of a pair of married liberals who are content to remain faithful in spirit only. The ends up having an affair with a musician while her husband heads for Europe. When he returns he tells her about his affair with a French Read More

So Long Letty

Actors: Charlotte Greenwood, Grant Withers, Bert Roach, Helen Foster

Synopsis: In this musical comedy, an oddball wife fears that her husband's rich uncle will not like her and therefore disinherit her spouse, so she engages another woman to play her when the uncle comes to call. Songs include: "One Sweet Little Yes," "Clowning," "Beauty Shop," "Am I Blue?," "Let Me Have My Read More

In the Headlines

Synopsis: While investigating a double murder, reporters Grant Withers and Marian Nixon fall in love. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

Tonight at Twelve

Actors: Madge Bellamy, Robert Ellis, Madeline Seymour, Margaret Livingston

Synopsis: In this comedy drama, a married man finds himself in philanderer's heaven when he gets involved with three local women. Fortunately, before it all goes too far, his son confesses that one of the letters his father found was really meant for him. Romantic mayhem ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Read More

Stolen Kisses

Actors: Hallam Cooley, Edna Murphy, Reed Howes, May McAvoy

Synopsis: In this comedy, a meddlesome and grouchy publisher pushes his son and his wife a little too hard to make a few grandchildren and nearly causes them to divorce. It seems the wife is almost unnaturally bonded with her poodle and has no interest in children. Their marriage nearly disintegrates during Read More

Fancy Baggage

Actors: Audrey Ferris, Myrna Loy, George Fawcett, Edmund Breese, Burr McIntosh

Synopsis: In this crime melodrama, Iverson (George Fawcett) is a stockbroker who has been sent to prison for illegally manipulating the market; however, as a matter of honor, he refuses to implicate his partner John Hardin (Edmund Breese), who was responsible for most of the wrong-doing. Iverson's daughter Read More

Black Waters

Actors: James Kirkwood, Mary Brian

Synopsis: Produced in Hollywood by Herbert Wilcox, who had been unable to obtain sound equipment in London, this "haunted house" (actually "haunted houseboat") mystery-thriller was nevertheless Great Britain's first "all-talkie." John Loder, the only Englishman involved besides Wilcox, and Mary Brian find Read More

The Little Wildcat

Actors: James Murray, George Fawcett, Robert Edeson, Doris Dawson, Audrey Ferris, Hallam Cooley

Synopsis: Released in both silent and part-talkie versions, The Little Wildcat starred James Murray, late of The Crowd, as barnstorming pilot Conrad Burton. While touring the provinces, Burton finds time to romance both Audrey (Audrey Ferris) and Sue (Doris Dawson). Hoping to force Burton into marriage, Sue Read More

Ladies Must Dress

Actors: Virginia Valli, Lawrence Gray, Hallam Cooley, Nancy Carroll, Earl Foxe

Synopsis: Victor Heerman wore two creative hats during the filming of Ladies Must Dress; not only did he direct the picture, but he also dreamed up the storyline. Virginia Valli stars as Eve, the plain-Jane secretary of George Ward Jr. (Lawrence Grey). Secretly in love with her boss, Eve can only sit on the Read More

Naughty But Nice

Actors: Colleen Moore, Donald Reed, Kathryn McGuire, Hallam Cooley

Synopsis: Naughty But Nice was based on The Bigamists, a story by Lewis Alen Brown. Gawky country girl Berenice Summers (Colleen Moore) is catapulted head-first into High Society when her Uncle Seth (Burr McIntosh) strikes oil. Shipped off to a fancy boarding school, Berenice suffers at the hands of her Read More

Her Wild Oat

Actors: Colleen Moore, Larry Kent, Hallam Cooley, Gwen Lee, Martha Mattox

Synopsis: In the tradition of Colleen Moore's best films, Her Wild Oat is nowhere near as "naughty" as its title. Moore is cast as Mary Brown, the orphaned owner of a tiny lunch wagon. Carefully salting away her money, Mary hopes to escape her tenement surroundings and take a long vacation. She gets the Read More

Wedding Bells

Actors: Raymond Griffith, Hallam Cooley, Iris Stuart, Vivien Oakland

Synopsis: This Raymond Griffith vehicle casts the debonair, top-hatted comedian as Algernon Schuyler Van Twitter, perennial "best man" at all his friends' weddings. To save his pal Tom Milbank (Hallam Cooley) from public disgrace, Algy tries to get his hands on some incriminating love letters in the Read More

No Place to Go

Actors: Lloyd Hughes, Mary Astor, Hallam Cooley, Virginia Lee Corbin, Myrtle Stedman

Synopsis: The all-purpose title No Place to Go was affixed to this adaptation of the Richard Connell story Isles of Romance. The film opens on what seems to be a perilous moment from a jungle epic -- but which turns out to be part of a floor show at a ritzy nightclub. After this promising opening, the story Read More

Free Love

Actors: Clara Bow, Donald Keith, Raymond McKee, Hallam Cooley, Charles Hill Mailes

Synopsis: Clara Bow and Donald Keith were teamed in several low-budget romantic comedies of the 1920s, but only Bow made it to the big time. In Free Love, settlement-house clergyman James Crawford (Keith) does his best to reform several paroled convicts. One of these is Marie Anthony (Bow), who isn't as Read More

Forever After

Actors: Lloyd Hughes, Mary Astor, Hallam Cooley, David Torrence, Eulalie Jensen

Synopsis: This sentimental romance was based on the stage play by Owen Davis. Ted Wayne (Lloyd Hughes) and Jennie Clayton (Mary Astor) are childhood sweethearts who automatically assume they will always be together. But Ted is poor and Jennie is wealthy, and her mother (Eulalie Jensen) wants her to marry Read More

Ladies at Play

Actors: Doris Kenyon, Louise Fazenda

Synopsis: Ladies at Play was based on Loose Ankles, a stage comedy by Sam Janney. Heroine Ann Harper is thrilled to discover that she has inherited six million dollars. She is less than thrilled when she finds out that, in order to collect her fortune, she must be married within three days. After looking Read More

Stop Flirting

Actors: John T. Murray, Wanda Hawley, Hallam Cooley, Ethel Shannon, Vera Steadman

Synopsis: The Christie brothers -- Al Christie and Charles Christie -- made popular comedies for many years (one of their alumni was eternal flapper Colleen Moore). For this six-reel feature, based on the London musical comedy by Fred Jackson, the Christies used most of their stock players. Perry Reynolds Read More

Seven Days

Actors: Lillian Rich, Creighton Hale, Lilyan Tashman, Mabel Julienne Scott, William Austin

Synopsis: Mary Roberts Rinehart's story When a Man Marries was made into a successful play, Tumble In, by Avery Hopwood. Biograph filmed a poor version of it as Seven Days, but, in 1925, producer Al Christie -- an expert when it came to comedy -- remade it as this amusing feature. The only downside is that Read More

Some Pun'kins

Actors: Charles Ray, George Fawcett, Duane Thompson, Bert Woodruff

Synopsis: After The Courtship of Miles Standish bombed, a bankrupted Charles Ray had to go back to working for other studios and trying to regain the audience he had lost. His role in this rural comedy was much like those that had made him famous -- the country boy who eventually gets the girl -- but Ray Read More

The Monster

Actors: Lon Chaney, Gertrude Olmstead, Hallam Cooley, Johnny Arthur, Charles Sellon

Synopsis: It's hard to tell at times whether director Roland West was aiming for laughs or thrills in The Monster, but this ambivalence is all part of the fun. Hallam Cooley and Johnny Arthur, two dumb clerks in Gertrude Olmstead's small-town general store, try to impress Olmstead by joining the sheriff's Read More

Free to Love

Synopsis: Producer B. P. Schulberg put his top star, Clara Bow, through her paces in this silent melodrama of a girl (Clara of course) wrongfully convicted of a crime, who is eventually adopted by the judge (Charles Hill Mailes) presiding at her trial. Bland juvenile actor Donald Keith would support Bow Read More

Sporting Youth

Actors: Reginald Denny, Fred Vroom, Laura La Plante, Lucille Ward

Synopsis: Against the wishes of director Harry A. Pollard, Reginald Denny insisted on casting Laura La Plante to play opposite him. His choice of leading lady was a winning one -- La Plante became Universal's favorite leading lady for the rest of the silent era. When a wealthy man is advised to go West for Read More

Never Say Die

Actors: Douglas MacLean, Lillian Rich, Helen Ferguson, Hallam Cooley, Lucien Littlefield

Synopsis: Wealthy John Woodbury (Douglas MacLean) is mistaken for a patient by a trio of overeager doctors. After being put through a battery of tests (one of which involves blindfolding Woodbury, who promptly walks out on the ledge of the high rise building), he is told he only has three months left to Read More

The Painted Flapper

Actors: Kathlyn Williams, James Kirkwood, Crauford Kent, Claire Adams, Pauline Garon

Synopsis: Divorcee Isabel Whitney (Kathlyn Williams) wants her eldest daughter, Eunice (Claire Adams), to marry Egbert Van Alyn (Crauford Kent), even though Jimmy Arnold (John Harron) has been her sweetheart since childhood. Eunice's younger sister, Arline (Pauline Garon), is a jazzy flapper who is creating Read More

Going Up

Actors: Douglas MacLean, Hallam Cooley, Arthur Stuart Hull, Francis McDonald, Hughie Mack

Synopsis: This farce was based on the musical comedy by Otto A. Harbach and Louis A. Hirsch, which was adapted from the play The Aviator by James H. Montgomery. Douglas MacLean -- who was especially good at farce comedy -- plays the lead, Robert Street. Street is an author whose novel about aviation, Going Read More

Dollar Devils

Actors: Joseph J. Dowling, Miles McCarthy, May Wallace, Eva Novak, Hallam Cooley

Synopsis: Hallam Cooley stars as a slick-haired slickster who comes to a small town to promote an oil well scam. So persuasive is Cooley that he not only manages to fleece the populace, but also wins over Neyna Farrell, the girl friend of down-to-earth engineering student Cullen Landis. This turns out to be Read More

Are You a Failure?

Actors: Madge Bellamy, Lloyd Hughes, Tom Santschi, Hardee Kirkland, Jane Keckley

Synopsis: Lloyd Hughes plays a Charles Ray type of character in this comedy-drama. Oliver Wendell Blaine (Hughes) comes from a long family line of fighters. Unfortunately, he's been coddled by a pair of aunts (Jane Keckley and Myrtle Vane) and has grown up to be a timid and cowardly young man. He becomes Read More

Wise Kid

Synopsis: The titular wise kid of this five-reel comedy/drama is Rosie Cooper (Gladys Walton), the cashier in a modest restaurant, whose suitors include the good-hearted bakery boy Freddie Smith (David Butler). Rosie at first finds herself drawn to a more sophisticated beau but eventually comes to recognize Read More

Beauty's Worth

Actors: Marion Davies, Forrest Stanley, June Elvidge, Truly Shattuck, Lydia Yeamans Titus

Synopsis: Although it wasn't acknowledged publicly for decades, newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst and actress Marion Davies were quite an item during the silent era -- and beyond. He produced all her pictures, except for her first one, and generally they were mild affairs which did little but show Read More

One Week of Love

Actors: Elaine Hammerstein, Conway Tearle, Hallam Cooley, Kate Lester

Synopsis: Producer Lewis J. Selznek showed off his skills as a showman with this flashy Elaine Hammerstein vehicle. While Hammerstein was never one of the biggest film stars of the '20s, he backed her up here with an adventuresome and picturesque tale. Beth Wynn (Hammerstein) is a spoiled society girl. At a Read More

Rose O' the Sea

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

Man with Two Mothers

Synopsis: This comedy-drama, with its ethnic and mother love themes, was very much of its era. When Dennis O'Neill (Cullen Landis) inherits his uncle's junk business, he has to relocate from Ireland to the States. His uncle's wish is that he take care of his aunt, Delia Bryan (Laura Lavarnie), but Read More

Her Night of Nights

Synopsis: This little romance, based on a story that ran in a magazine called Snappy Stories, doesn't have a lot to offer except for a selection of beautiful gowns worn by star Marie Prevost and the antics of Mickey Daniels, who plays her kid brother (and who would soon sign with Hal Roach for the Our Gang Read More

The Kingdom Within

Actors: Russell Simpson, Gaston Glass, Pauline Starke, Hallam Cooley

Synopsis: This romantic drama carried a spiritual theme. In a small rural town next to a lumber camp, two outcasts become friends -- toy maker Amos Deming (Gaston Glass) and Emily Preston (Pauline Stark). Amos' father, Caleb (Russell Simpson), has always resented the fact that his boy had a crippled arm and Read More

What Do Men Want?

Synopsis: According to this Lois Weber production, men don't really seem to know what they want at all -- first Frank (J. Frank Glendon) wants to be an inventor. Then he wants to marry his childhood sweetheart, Hallie (the lovely Claire Windsor). Then he wants children. Then, when his inventions bring him Read More

Playing With Fire

Synopsis: Olga Petrova stars as Jean Servian, an artist specializing in tiny cameos. Warned that she will lose her eyesight if she persists in her chosen profession, Jean accepts the marriage proposal of wealthy widower Geoffrey Vane (Arthur Hoops), but only after telling him that she is wedding him for Read More

The Ten Dollar Raise

Actors: William V. Mong, Marguerite de la Motte, Pat O'Malley, Helen Jerome Eddy

Synopsis: Mild-mannered Wilkins (William V. Mong) has been a bookkeeper for the firm of Bates and Stryker for 15 years without receiving a raise. His sweetheart and co-worker, Emily (Helen Jerome Eddy), is waiting too, because a raise would enable them to marry. Then Wilkins is tricked by Don (Hal Cooley) Read More

An Old Fashioned Boy

Synopsis: With a title like this one, it's practically a given that this silent picture starred Charles Ray. But this time around, instead of being a homespun rural boy, he's a city guy with homespun ideals. His dream of a home in the suburbs is so strong that he has one built before he tells his fiancee Read More

The Brass Bullet

Synopsis: Blond Juanita Hansen, a runner-up to Pearl White and Ruth Roland in the serial queen sweepstakes, starred as Rosalind Joy, the constantly imperiled heiress to a fortune in gold in this Desert Island serial produced by Universal. Rosalind's Uncle Gilbert (Joseph W. Girard) considers the gold his Read More

The Deciding Kiss

Actors: Winifred Greenwood, Hallam Cooley, Thornton Church

Synopsis: In a odd bit of casting, the strong-willed, 20-year-old Edith Roberts starts out as a meek, 12-year-old ragamuffin in this drama. Orphan Eleanor Hamlin (Roberts) is living with her grandparents in a Cape Cod village, but they hand her over to wealthy Beulah Page (Winifred Greenwood), who offers to Read More