Josef SwickardFilmography

Mexicali Rose

Actors: Gene Autry, Smiley Burnette, Noah Beery, Sr., Luana Walters, William Farnum

Synopsis: Gene Autry goes up against a crooked oil company in this delightful music Western restored in 2001 by Gene Autry Entertainment. Carruthers (William Royle) of the so-called Alta Vista Oil Company is selling worthless stock from a non-existent well located on a Spanish land grant occupied by Padre Read More

$1,000 a Touchdown

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Martha Raye, Eric Blore, Susan Hayward, John Hartley

Synopsis: This film should have been a press agent's dream: Hollywood's two greatest "big mouths," Joe E. Brown and Martha Raye, together in the same picture. Brown and Raye play a show business couple who inherit a near-bankrupt college. They decide to build up the school's scraggly football team in hopes Read More

Say It in French

Actors: Ray Milland, Olympe Bradna, Irene Hervey, Janet Beecher, Mary Carlisle

Synopsis: In this comedy, an American golf pro falls in love with a woman while visiting France; before long they are married and in the US. Upon their arrival, they are dismayed to discover that the golfer's parents have arranged for him to marry a wealthy socialite so they can use her money to support Read More

You Can't Take It with You

Actors: Jean Arthur, Lionel Barrymore, James Stewart, Edward Arnold, Mischa Auer, Ann Miller, Spring Byington

Synopsis: Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman's whimsical Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway play You Can't Take It With You was transformed into a paean to populism by director Frank Capra and screenwriter Robert Riskin. This is the story of the zany Sycamore household, presided over by Grandpa Vanderhof (Lionel Barrymore Read More

Sandflow

Actors: Buck Jones, Lita Chevret, Bob Kortman, Arthur Ayleswofth

Synopsis: Director Leslie Selander exhibits the sure-handed expertise that would endear him to latter-day western cultists in his 1937 formula western Sandflow. Buck Jones plays the son of a crooked land dealer. Seeking redemption, Jones rides through the west to compensate every rancher who was cheated by Read More

The Girl Said No

Actors: Robert Armstrong, Irene Hervey, Paula Stone, Vivian Hart

Synopsis: The rollicking music of Gilbert and Sullivan is featured in this musical. It tells the story of a dance hall girl with a love of money. She will spend it every chance she gets as long as it is not hers. Trouble ensues when she sponges off a bookie during a date. To get revenge, he becomes her Read More

Under Your Spell

Actors: Lawrence Tibbett, Wendy Barrie, Gregory Ratoff, Arthur Treacher, Gregory Gaye

Synopsis: Otto Preminger was able to make his directorial debut on Under Your Spell solely because Darryl Zanuck couldn't care less about the film's quality; it was a contractual obligation film for Lawrence Tibbett, who was proving a washout as a film star. In Spell, Tibbett plays Anthony Allen, a world Read More

The Penitente Murder Case

The Boss Rider of Gun Creek

Actors: Buck Jones, Harvey Clark, Muriel Evans, Tom Chatterton, Josef Swickard

Synopsis: Western star Buck Jones essays a dual role in Boss Rider of Gun Creek. In time-honored sagebrush tradition, one of the Bucks is a good guy, the other a villain. The bad Buck commits a murder, but it's the good Buck who ends up facing a hangman's noose. Thus, good Buck impersonates bad Buck in Read More

Millionaire Kid

Caryl of the Mountains

Actors: Robert Walker, Steve Clark

Synopsis: Caryl is played by Lois Wilde, but despite her title-character status Ms. Wilde is third-billed behind a pair of "juniors." Doggy star Rin Tin Tin Jr. and human hero Francis X. Bushman Jr. handle all the rough stuff, while Caryl alternates between waiting patiently and requiring rescue. Rinty Jr. Read More

Custer's Last Stand

Synopsis: Produced by poverty row organization Stage and Screen, this less-than-faithful serialized version of the historical battle seems to have rounded up every B-Western player not otherwise engaged at the time. That fact added to a couple of impressive sets drew favorable reviews for the serial's Read More

The Black Coin [Serial]

Synopsis: The first of three inexpensive serials produced by Louis Weiss for Poverty Row company Stage and Screen Productions, The Black Coin centered around 12 black coins, who together form a treasure map. The plot was as old as the Hollywood Hills, and didn't quite deliver the same punch by 1936, despite Read More

A Dog of Flanders

Actors: Frankie Thomas, Helen Parrish, O.P. Heggie, Richard Quine, Christian Rub

Synopsis: Dog of Flanders, the durable novel written in 1872 by the author who signed herself Ouida, was filmed three times, first in 1924 with Jackie Coogan. The second filmization, produced in 1935, stars child actors Frankie Thomas, Helen Parrish and Richard Quine as three poor Flemish youths whose lives Read More

The Man Who Reclaimed His Head

Actors: Claude Rains, Joan Bennett, Lionel Atwill, Henry O'Neill

Synopsis: This truly offbeat filmization of Jean Bart's stage drama The Man Who Reclaimed His Head has been misleadingly released to TV as part of the "Shock Theater" package, even though the film is more melancholy than horrific. At the height of WW I, the trembling, near-lunatic Paul Verin (Claude Rains) Read More

The Crusades

Actors: Loretta Young, Henry Wilcoxon, Ian Keith, C. Aubrey Smith, Katherine de Mille

Synopsis: The Holy Wars are given the usual overblown Cecil B. DeMille treatment in The Crusades. It all begins in the 12th-century AD, when Jerusalem falls into the hands of the Saracens, and the Christians are slaughtered or sold into slavery. A holy man known as The Hermit (C. Aubrey Smith) rallies the Read More

Beloved

Actors: John Boles, Gloria Stuart, Albert Conti, Dorothy Peterson, Morgan Farley

Synopsis: Apparently inspired by Noel Coward's Bitter Sweet, Beloved is a lush, lachrymose musical romance set in Vienna, South Carolina and New York City. John Boles stars as Austrian composer Carl Hausmann, whose musical career is very nearly cut short during the 1848 revolution. Carl is whisked off by Read More

The Lost City [Serial]

Actors: Kane Richmond, George "Gabby" Hayes, Josef Swickard

Synopsis: The legendary so-bad-it's-good serial The Lost City manages to keep the audience on its toes for 12 full chapters. It all begins when Hero Bruce Gordon (Kane Richmond) invents a device to track the mysterious electrical disturbances which are causing turmoil all over the world. The invention leads Read More

The Return of Chandu

Actors: Bela Lugosi, Maria Alba, Clara Kimball Young, Dean Benton, Josef Swickard

Synopsis: Return of Chandu is a 65-minute feature version of the 12-chapter Principal Pictures serial, based on the radio program Chandu the Magician. Bela Lugosi, who played the villain in a previous 1932 adaptation of Chandu, here portrays the famed magician himself, better known to friends and family as Read More

Cross Streets

Actors: Claire Windsor, Johnny Mack Brown, Anita Louise, Ken Thomson, Matty Kemp

Synopsis: Invincible Studios' Cross Streets is something of a watershed film, providing leading roles for fading silent stars Claire Windsor and Kenneth Thomson and relative newcomers Johnny Mack Brown and Anita Louise. The story is the old saw about the brilliant surgeon who disappears from view after a Read More

The Narrow Corner

Actors: Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Patricia Ellis, Dudley Digges, Ralph Bellamy

Synopsis: A Somerset Maugham story was adapted for The Narrow Corner, a film about Man's inability to escape his destiny. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. plays a fugitive from Australian justice, wanted for accidentally killing a man. He escapes to the East Indies in a ship rented by his father. Among the people Read More

The Lone Defender

Actors: Rin Tin Tin, Walter Miller, June Marlowe, Buzz Barton, Josef Swickard

Synopsis: Having basically bankrolled the struggling Warner Bros., the era's most popular canine, Rin Tin Tin, signed a 5,000-dollars-a-picture contract with Poverty Row operator Nat Levine. The result, a 15-chapter serial (Levine demanded hard labor for his shekels), featured Rinty opposite veteran genre Read More

Mamba

Actors: Jean Hersholt, Eleanor Boardman, Ralph Forbes, Josef Swickard, Claude Fleming

Synopsis: One of the most ambitious productions ever to emerge from parsimonious Tiffany Studios, Mamba is also one of the few 1930s horror films to be lensed in Technicolor. The story takes place in East Africa, where bestial August Bolte (Jean Hersholt), also known as Mamba, holds the local Zulu Read More

Phantom of the Desert

Actors: Jack Perrin, Eva Novak, Josef Swickard, Edward Earle

Synopsis: A wild stallion is blamed for "kidnapping" local mares to build a harem! Cowboy Jack Perrin, however, believes the real culprit is smooth-talking Robert Walker (whose pencil-thin mustache was a dead giveaway of his evil intentions), and manages to rescue the stallion from the glue factory in the Read More

Darkened Skies

Synopsis: In this drama, a woman falls for a rumrunner who promises to quit bootlegging and marry her. But first he needs to make one more trip. To assist him she is supposed to warn him of any danger by flashing a light from the coast. Unfortunately, a government agent intervenes, stops her and catches the Read More

Song of the Caballero

Actors: Ken Maynard, Doris Hill, Francis Ford, Gino Corrado

Synopsis: This early sound western was cowboy-star Ken Maynard's second to last under his 1929-1930 contract with Universal. The studio's emphasis on bringing music to the western genre despite Maynard's rather limited vocal capabilities was not paying off at the box-office. Sound in general was increasing Read More

Devil's Chaplain

Actors: Josef Swickard, Virginia Brown Faire, Cornelius Keefe, Wheeler Oakman

Synopsis: Escaping from a revolution, the King (Joseph Swickard) of a mythical Balkan country heads to the United States. Here he finds a friend in the form of dashing secret service agent Yorke Norray (Cornelius Keefe). With Norray's help, the King is restored to his throne, and the rascally Read More

Phantom of the North

Actors: Edith Roberts, Donald Keith

Synopsis: Produced and directed by Poverty Row entrepreneur Harry S. Webb, this very low-budget silent Northwest melodrama starred Edith Roberts, a former Ziegfeld girl, as Doris Rayburn, whose trapper boyfriend, Bob Donald (Donald Keith), is falsely accused of killing a colleague. The real killer, however Read More

Bachelor's Club

Actors: Barbara Worth, Edna Murphy, Richard Talmadge

Synopsis: Ace acrobat Richard Talmadge heads the cast of the entertaining cheapie Bachelor's Club. Talmadge plays the president of a club wherein the members have disavowed any contact with women. Punishment for infraction of the rules is a severe paddling by the sergeant-at-arms. But when he falls in love Read More

Street Corners

Actors: Henry B. Walthall, Josef Swickard, Derelys Perdue, Rex Lease

Synopsis: Well-known Hollywood producer and public-relations expert Russell Birdwell was the prime mover of the multi-part "actuality" film series Street Corners. Each of the series' 12-minute episodes featured a real-life human interest yarn, focusing on the mean streets of New York. In one story, a Read More

Frozen River

Actors: Davey Lee, Josef Swickard, Raymond McKee

Synopsis: Canine star Rin Tin Tin makes his all-talking (or is it all-barking?) debut in Warner Bros.' Frozen River. In characteristic fashion, Rinty braves the elements to rescue heroine Nina Quartero from the villains, a gang of cutthroats and thieves. The doggie hero also comes to the aid of little Davey Lee Read More

The Eternal Woman

Actors: Olive Borden, Ralph Graves, John Miljan

Synopsis: Most of the films of silent screen starlet Olive Borden have apparently been lost to the ages, and Columbia's The Eternal Woman is no exception. The story begins with a shipwreck, as Argentine stowaway Anita (Borden) rescues handsome American passenger Hartley Forbes (Ralph Graves). She comes to Read More

Times Square

Synopsis: An early independently produced "part-talkie," this Tin Pan Alley melodrama starred future director Arthur Lubin as Benjamin Lederwitski, a serious Jewish composer turned Tin Pan Alley song-plugger under the more palatable name of "Russ Glover." An underhanded rival, Lon Roberts (played by Read More

Dark Skies

Actors: Shirley Mason, Wallace MacDonald, William V. Mong, Tom O'Brien, Josef Swickard

Synopsis: Also known as Darkened Skies, this early independent talkie boasted an impressive (for its time) cast. Evelyn Brent, on loan from Paramount, stars as Juanita Morgan, who falls in love with dashing rum-runner Captain Pedro Real (Wallace MacDonald). For Juanita's sake, Pedro promises to give up his Read More

Sharp Shooters

Actors: George O'Brien, Lois Moran, Noah Young, Tom Dugan, William Demarest

Synopsis: George O'Brien stars as George, a footloose sailor who adheres to a philosophy of "love 'em and leave 'em." While on leave in Morocco, George makes the acquaintance of fiery French dancer Lorette (Lois Moran), who of course falls madly in love with him. Regarding Lorette as just another diversion Read More

Comrades

Actors: Helene Costello, Gareth Hughes, Donald Keith, Josef Swickard

Synopsis: Comrades gets under way at a military academy, where cadets Gareth Hughes and Donald Keith greet the news of WWI in radically different ways. A craven coward, Hughes tries to duck military service on the battlefields of France, whereupon Keith selflessly offers to serve in Hughes' place. When Hughes Read More

Turn Back the Hours

Actors: Myrna Loy, Walter Pidgeon, Sam Hardy, Josef Swickard, Sheldon Lewis

Synopsis: Warner Bros. contractees Myrna Loy and Walter Pidgeon were "borrowed" by low-budget Lumas pictures for the 1928 military drama Turn Back the Hours. Based on the venerable stage play by Edward E. Rose, the film stars Pidgeon as a Naval officer who is dishonorably discharged for cowardice. While Read More

The Veiled Woman

Actors: Paul Vincent

Synopsis: Emmett J. Flynn had directed everyone from William S. Hart to Laurel and Hardy by the time he wielded the megaphone for his first talkie, The Veiled Woman. The title character is Nanon (Lia Tora) who, in flashback, cautions a virginal young woman (Lupita Tovar) from trodding the primrose path in Read More

Senorita

Actors: Bebe Daniels, James Hall, William Powell, Josef Swickard

Synopsis: One of the most frustrating items in the list of missing Bebe Daniels comedies, Senorita certainly sounds fascinating. When the life and property of Spanish Californian aristocrat Don Hernandez (Josef Swickard) is threatened by land-grabbers, the old man sends for his grandson to help out. What he Read More

The King of Kings

Actors: H.B. Warner, Dorothy Cumming, Ernest Torrence, Joseph Schildkraut, James Neill

Synopsis: Having scored big-time box office with his first Biblical epic, The Ten Commandments (1923), Cecil B. DeMille hoped to top this success with his 1927 The King of Kings. Inasmuch as he was now dealing with the life of Christ, DeMille had to be careful to serve up equal amounts of showmanship and Read More

Get Your Man

Actors: Clara Bow, Josef Swickard, Josephine Dunn

Synopsis: Only a few months earlier Clara Bow had been seen in Wings. The same with Charles "Buddy" Rogers -- in fact, his one film between Wings and this film was My Best Girl with future wife Mary Pickford. But apparently Paramount wasn't too concerned with keeping up this level of quality for its stars; Get Your Man Read More

Time to Love

Actors: Raymond Griffith, William Powell, Josef Swickard

Synopsis: Dapper "polite" comedian Raymond Griffith starred in this so-so vehicle. Griffith is cast as French Alfred Sava-Goiu, who, after being dumped by his sweetheart, philosophically decides to end it all by jumping into the Seine. Instead, he lands in a passing boat owned by the Countess Elvire (Vera Voronina Read More

One Increasing Purpose

Actors: Edmund Lowe, Lila Lee, Holmes Herbert, May Allison, Lawford Davidson

Synopsis: This portentously (and pretentiously) titled Fox Studios release 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 Read More

The Golden Stallion

Synopsis: Joan Forsythe (Molly Malone) arrives in the town of Cache D'Orr, near the Canadian border, to find and claim an inheritance that was left by her late father. Furthermore, in order to find the clue to the fortune in gold, in a hidden mine, she must make contact with a Native American, Black Eagle (Jay J. Bryan Read More

Old San Francisco

Actors: Dolores Costello, Warner Oland, Charles Emmett Mack, Josef Swickard, John Miljan

Synopsis: It's hard to believe that Darryl F. Zanuck, producer of such anti-prejudice films of the 1940s as Gentleman's Agreement and Pinky, wrote the incredibly racist screenplay of Old San Francisco. After a lengthy prologue detailing the establishment and settlement of San Francisco by the Spanish Read More

The Night Patrol

Actors: Richard Talmadge, Mary Carr, Rose Blossom, Gardner James, Victor Dillingham

Synopsis: The Night Patrol is a lesser vehicle for silent actor (Richard Talmadge). He plays Dick Bradley, an Irish policeman. Bradley is in love with a girl (Rose Blossom) whose brother (Gardner James) has fallen in with a gang of criminals. In fact, Bradley has arrested the youth for a murder. However Read More

Stop, Look And Listen

Actors: Larry Semon

Synopsis: Supposedly based on the musical comedy of the same name, Stop, Look and Listen emerged as a typically slapsticky vehicle for pasty-faced comedian Larry Semon. Plots never really matter much to Semon, who usually abandoned the storyline sometime during the second reel to indulge himself in his Read More

Three Pals

Synopsis: Although some elements of this drama smack of the tired ploys of Drury Lane melodramas -- the demand for either the payment of a debt or the girl's hand, the girl riding her horse to victory -- a couple of unusual twists add some interest. Two Southern gentlemen, Colonel Girard (Josef Swickard) Read More

Senor Daredevil

Actors: Ken Maynard, Dorothy Devore, George Nichols, Josef Swickard, J.P. McGowan

Synopsis: In his first Western for First National and producer Charles J. Rogers, Ken Maynard played Don Luis O'Flagherty, a daredevil coming to the rescue of his long-lost father, "Tiger" O'Flagherty (George Nichols), the supervisor of a supply-wagon train destined for the miners in Sonora. Tiger is being Read More

Don Juan

Actors: John Barrymore, Mary Astor, Willard Louis, Estelle Taylor, Warner Oland, Montagu Love

Synopsis: Historically important as the first film to carry a Vitaphone sound track (consisting of music and sound effects, but no dialogue) Don Juan is a first-rate production by any standards, and would have been just as good with or without musical accompaniment. John Barrymore plays the legendary lover Read More

Desert Gold

Actors: Neil Hamilton, Shirley Mason, Robert W. Frazer, William Powell, Josef Swickard

Synopsis: Based on a story by Zane Grey, Desert Gold is a remake of the 1919 film of the same name. Neil Hamilton stars as George Thorne, a U.S. cavalry lieutenant in love with fair senorita Mercedes Castaneda (Shirley Mason). When Mercedes is kidnapped by scurrilous outlaw Snake Landree (William Powell in Read More

Officer Jim

Actors: Roy Hughes

Synopsis: Filmed on location in Texas, this very minor silent crime drama starred Roy Hughes in the title role, a cop who catches a gang of bank robbers and wins the daughter (Gloria Grey) of the bank's president (Joseph Swickard). Produced by Mrs. Frank J. Hart, Officer Jim was distributed by the Read More

Kentucky Handicap

Actors: Reed Howes, Alice Calhoun, Robert McKim, Lydia Knott

Synopsis: Former "Arrow Collar" man Reed Howes once again gets to show off his pecs in the low-budget Kentucky Handicap. Howes plays a horse owner who, through the chicanery of the villains, is banned from racing just before the Kentucky Derby. He manages to clear his name just in time for the first bugle Read More

High Flyer

Synopsis: In one of his many low-budget action adventures for poverty row producer Harry J. Brown, former "Arrow Collar Man" Reed Howes played an airplane inventor whose best buddy (James Bradbury) steals his latest design to impress a girl (Ethel Shannon). Howes, however, turns up at the right moment Read More

The Whispering Canyon

The Unknown Cavalier

Actors: Ken Maynard, Kathleen Collins, T. Roy Barnes, James Mason, Otis Harlan

Synopsis: One of Ken Maynard's very best silent westerns, The Unknown Cavalier was filmed on locations in Death Valley, California. Maynard plays Tom Drury, a cowboy whose quick thinking stops a notorious outlaw, "The Hawk," from further misdeeds. The villain, as it turns out, is none other than Henry Suggs Read More

The Wizard of Oz

Actors: Larry Semon, Bryant Washburn, Dorothy Dwan, Virginia Pearson, Charlie Murray

Synopsis: Popular silent film comedian Larry Semon literally sold the ranch to secure film rights to L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz -- then proceeded to chuck most of the Baum story in favor of his usual broad slapstick antics. In Semon's version, Dorothy (played by Dorothy Dwan, aka Mrs. Larry Semon) is Read More

Playing With Souls

Actors: Jacqueline Logan, Mary Astor, Belle Bennett, Clive Brook

Synopsis: This silent drama, based on the novel by the Countess de Chambrun, had quite a few unusual twists. Amy and Matthew Dale (Belle Bennett and Clive Brook) separate and they place their young son, Matthew Jr., in a London boarding school. The boy grows up without knowing his parents, and is taunted by Read More

Easy Money

Synopsis: Likeable Bud Parsons (Cullen Landis) commits a less-than-likeable robbery to impress a fickle cabaret dancer (Gladys Walton). The imprisoned Parsons is approached by shifty lawyer Lewis (Crauford Kent), who persuades the lad to pose as the long-lost heir to a fortune. Anxious to get out of jail Read More

Cactus Trails

Actors: Jack Perrin, Alma Rayford, Nelson McDowell, Wilbur McGaugh

Synopsis: One of the silent screen's better also-ran cowboys, Jack Perrin starred in this entertaining oater about a drifter who rescues a Mexican senorita (Alma Rayford) from a runaway carriage. She gets an opportunity to return the compliment when Perrin is jailed and awaiting trial for instigating a Read More

Verdict

Actors: William Collier, Jr., Lou Tellegen, Gertrude Astor, Louise Lorraine, Charles Clary

Synopsis: A minor mystery melodrama, producer Philip Goldstone's creaky The Verdict employed the oldest cliché of them all. Yes, the butler did indeed do it! Employers of a fashion emporium, Carol (Louise Lorraine), a sales girl, and Jimmy (William Collier Jr.), the young bookkeeper, find their innocent Read More

Sign of the Cactus

Actors: Jack Hoxie, Helen Holmes, Gordon Russell, Francis Ford, Josef Swickard

Synopsis: Silent western hero Jack Hoxie assumes the guise of an avenging angel called "Whitehorse Cactus" when his father is killed during a dispute over water rights with a large corporation. He tracks down the killer, a hired gunslinger from back East (Frank Newberg) and then confronts the water company Read More

The Keeper of the Bees

Actors: Robert W. Frazer, Josef Swickard, Martha Mattox, Clara Bow, Alyce Mills

Synopsis: Gene Stratton-Porter's 1875 novel was still very widely read 50 years later, when it was made into a motion picture. James MacFarlane (Robert Frazer) is a disabled war veteran who is told he has only a few months to live. He leaves the hospital and wanders the countryside until he meets and Read More

She Wolves

Actors: Alma Rubens, Jack Mulhall, Bertram Grassby

Synopsis: Germaine (Alma Rubens) is unhappy when her parents force her into a marriage with the wealthy Lucien D'Artois (Jack Mulhall). D'Artois cares nothing for appearances, and Germaine had wished for a man with more style and flair. When she upbraids him for his lacks, D'Artois -- who loves her very Read More

Fifth Avenue Models

Actors: Mary Philbin, Norman Kerry, Josef Swickard, William Conklin, Rosemary Theby

Synopsis: Isobel Ludani (Mary Philbin) supports herself and her father -- an unsuccessful artist (Josef Swickard) -- by working at a modiste's shop. When she is pressed into service as a mannequin, she gets into a knock-down, drag-out fight with one of the other models and ruins her dress. The modiste Read More

Northern Code

Synopsis: As its title implies, this independently made, routine melodrama takes place in the Canadian North Woods. Raoul LaFane (Francis McDonald) is a brutal, hard-drinking trapper who abuses his wife, Marie (Eva Novak), on a regular basis. During one attack, she shoots him and he falls. Marie is Read More

Off the Highway

Actors: Marguerite de la Motte, William V. Mong, John Bowers, Josef Swickard

Synopsis: Character actor William V. Mong rarely landed a role that was a real tour de force, but he has one -- or, rather, two -- in this drama. The wealthy but miserly Caleb Fry (Mong) lives with his lookalike servant, Tatterly (also Mong). The old man is the guardian of his nephew, Donald Brett Read More

Shadow of the East

Actors: Frank Mayo, Mildred Harris, Norman Kerry, Bertram Grassby, Evelyn Brent

Synopsis: This mystical tale of India was based on the novel by E.M. Hull, the author of The Sheik, the book which became the film that shot Rudolph Valentino to stardom. The Sheik this picture is not -- instead of Valentino, we have the stolid Norman Kerry playing the requisite sheik in a supporting role; Read More

Defying the Law

Actors: Lew Cody, Renée Adorée, Josef Swickard, Buddy Post

Synopsis: This odd program drama seemed out of pace with the Roaring Twenties, and is only redeemed by its excellent cast. The Southern California coast made an adequate backdrop for the story, which was supposed to take place in San Francisco. Michelo Bresca (Josef Swickard), an old Italian-American man Read More

Boy of Flanders

Actors: Josef Swickard, Nigel de Brulier, Lionel Belmore, Nell Craig, Jeanne Carpenter

Synopsis: This so-so Jackie Coogan vehicle was based on the novel, A Dog of Flanders, by Ouida -- and the dog in the film, by the way, is the famed Mack Sennett canine, Teddy. When his mother and grandfather die, little Nello (Coogan) is left all alone in the Dutch village of St. Agneten. The only one who Read More

North of Nevada

Synopsis: When old rancher Mark Ridgeway (Josef Swickard) passes away, his property goes to relatives in the East instead of to trusted foreman Tom Taylor (Fred Thomson) as promised. The relatives, Reginald (Taylor Graves) and his sister Marion (Hazel Keener), arrive to take over the ranch, and Tom quickly Read More

Maytime

Actors: Ethel Shannon, Harrison Ford, William Norris, Clara Bow, Wallace MacDonald

Synopsis: This was the first time the sentimental Rida Johnson Young play was filmed (it was remade in 1937 as a Jeanette MacDonald/ Nelson Eddy vehicle). The wealthy Ottilie Van Zandt (Ethel Shannon) falls in love with Richard Wayne, the son of the family gardener (Harrison Ford). Although the pair swears Read More

Men

Actors: Pola Negri, Robert W. Frazer, Robert Edeson, Josef Swickard, Monte Collins

Synopsis: After her brilliant career in Europe, Pola Negri, came to America to make films for Paramount. Her first few pictures for the studio were disappointing, so they imported Russian director Dmitri Buchowetzki to work with her again (the two had made films together overseas). Buchowetzki wrote the Read More

Poisoned Paradise: The Forbidden Story of Monte Carlo

Synopsis: This mediocre romantic drama was vastly improved by the presence of a certain WAMPAS Baby Star (a popularity award given by the Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers) named Clara Bow. After her foster mother wins at Monte Carlo, Margot LeBlanc (Bow) decides to try her hand at gambling. Read More

Pal O'mine

Actors: Irene Rich, Pauline Garon, Josef Swickard, Willard Louis, Al Roscoe

Synopsis: This standard but solid programmer was put out by a company called C.B.C., a Poverty Row studio derisively called "Corned Beef and Cabbage." Later in the decade, the company would change its name to Columbia, and, under the leadership of tough, plain-spoken mogul Harry Cohn, it would become a real Read More

Dante's Inferno

Actors: Lawson Butt, Howard Gaye, Ralph Lewis, Pauline Starke, Josef Swickard

Synopsis: Bearing only a tenuous connection to Dante Alighieri's epic poem, the 1924 Dante's Inferno bears more resemblance to A Christmas Carol. Hard-hearted businessman Ralph Lewis drives a former friend to contemplate suicide. Just before disappearing into the night, the friend gives Lewis a copy of Read More

Mothers-In-Law

Actors: Gaston Glass, Ruth Clifford, Edith Yorke, Josef Swickard, Crauford Kent

Synopsis: One of the opening titles to this drama was "A mother-in-law is just a mother with another child to love" -- rather an unusual take on mothers-in-law (see Harold Lloyd's Hot Water for a difference in opinion). Edith Yorke portrays the mother-in-law heroine. When Vianna Courtleigh (Ruth Clifford) Read More

Bavu

Actors: Wallace Beery, Estelle Taylor, Forrest Stanley, Sylvia Breamer, Josef Swickard

Synopsis: This adventurous drama of Russia's revolutionary days was based on the stage play by Earl Carroll. Wallace Beery -- at the time one of filmdom's most dependable villains -- has the title of role of Felix Bavu, an illiterate brute who has used the revolution to promote his own power-hungry aims. He Read More

Cricket on the Hearth

Actors: Paul Gerson, Virginia Brown Faire, Josef Swickard, Fritzi Ridgeway, Paul Moore

Synopsis: Although its popularity didn't endure, The Cricket on the Hearth was originally the favorite of Charles Dickens' Christmas Books (the most well-known today is, of course, A Christmas Carol. Director Lorimar Johnston makes an imposing Josiah Tackleton (also known as "Old Gruff"), and producer Paul Read More

Mr. Billings Spends His Dime

Actors: Walter Hiers, George Fawcett, Robert McKim, Patricia Palmer, Josef Swickard

Synopsis: Although rotund Walter Hiers was frequently seen in motion pictures all throughout the silent era, he was generally playing a supporting role. In this light comedy feature, however, he gets top billing. John Percival Billings (Hiers) is a haberdashery clerk who falls in love with Suzanna, a Read More

Age of Desire

Synopsis: Janet Loring (Myrtle Steadman) marries millionaire Malcolm Trask (Frank Truesdell). The only catch is that she has to desert her son, Ranny. Ranny becomes a crook's helper who grows up (to be played by William Collier Jr.) to become a thief himself. The years pass and Janet wants to see her boy Read More

My American Wife

Actors: Gloria Swanson, Antonio Moreno, Josef Swickard, Eric Mayne, Gino Corrado

Synopsis: Gloria Swanson is My American Wife in this farfetched but entertaining romantic drama. Married to Argentinian horse rancher Josef Swickard, Gloria is romanced by handsome aristocrat Antonio Moreno. This one has the whole shootin' match: duels, blood feuds, midnight trysts, and a pulse-pounding Read More

Daughters of the Rich

Actors: Miriam Cooper, Gaston Glass, Ethel Shannon, Ruth Clifford

Synopsis: This society drama only existed to give moviegoers of the Roaring Twenties a chance to see the wealthy behave scandalously in luxurious surroundings. Gerald Walden (Gaston Glass) and Maud Barhyte (Miriam Cooper), members of high society, become engaged. While Paris, they are invited to a party Read More

Prince of a King

Actors: Dean Riesner

Synopsis: Dinky Dean plays a royal prince who is kidnapped as an infant by henchmen loyal to a villain (Sam De Grasse) who hopes to be king. The boy is raised by traveling acrobats after he is placed in their cart when the kidnapper can't bring himself to kill the boy. Crigi becomes part of the act but runs Read More

The Eternal Struggle

Actors: Renée Adorée, Earle Williams, Barbara La Marr, Pat O'Malley, Wallace Beery

Synopsis: This Northwest melodrama was based on the novel The Law Bringers by G. B. Lancaster. Andree Grange (Renée Adorée), the daughter of the local cafe owner (Josef Swickward), is engaged to marry Sergeant Neil Tempest (Earle Williams) of the Northwest Mounted Police. But she falls in love with one of Read More

Forgive and Forget

Synopsis: Estelle Taylor, the off-screen wife of boxer Jack Dempsey, starred in this silent whodunit from newcomer Columbia Pictures. Taylor played Mrs. Cameron, a society matron blackmailed by her lover's roommate (Philo McCullough. When the lover (Vernon Steele) is found murdered, Mr. Cameron (Wyndham Standing Read More

The Golden Gift

Actors: Alice Lake, John Bowers, Harriet Hammond, Josef Swickard, Bridgetta Clark

Synopsis: Having served her apprenticeship as leading lady to Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton, Alice Lake graduated to stardom in the 1920s through the auspices of Metro studios. In The Golden Gift, Lake plays a famous singer. When she gives birth to her baby, the singer simultaneously loses her "golden Read More

Across the Deadline

Actors: Frank Mayo, Russell Simpson, Wilfred Lucas, Lydia Knott, Molly Malone

Synopsis: Manly Universal star Frank Mayo stars in this tale of the Northwest. Gilead, a lumber town, is divided into two halves: on one side are the churches and God-fearing folk; across the street are the saloons and the troublemakers. Enoch Kidder (Russell Simpson) and his son John (Mayo) live on the Read More

The Young Rajah

Actors: Rudolph Valentino, Wanda Hawley, Pat Moore, Charles Ogle

Synopsis: Having played a sheik, it only made sense to cast Rudolph Valentino -- whose first name was still being spelled Rodolph -- as an Indian rajah. At least, that's how Paramount saw things, and that's really the only excuse for the creation of this drama. The Judds, Caleb (Spottiswoode Aitken) and Read More

Another Man's Shoes

Synopsis: Pleasant-looking British-born Herbert Rawlinson starred in this silent comedy-drama as look-alike cousins Stuart Granger and Jack Burton. When wealthy but crooked businessman Granger gets in trouble with a gang of criminals, he switches identity with the unsuspecting Burton. After escaping several Read More

The Storm

Actors: Virginia Valli, Matt Moore, House Peters, Josef Swickard, Frank Lanning

Synopsis: Based on Langdon McCormick's 1919 play, this silent melodrama stars Matt Moore and House Peters as War veterans sharing a cabin in the Canadian Northwest. A French trapper (Josef Swickard) and his daughter (Virginia Valli) seek shelter from both the Northwest Mounted Police and the elements. Read More

Pawned

Actors: Tom Moore, Edith Roberts

Synopsis: Although Frank Packard proved his talent by coming up with The Miracle Man, he was also responsible for the story to this uninspired melodrama. In order to get to New York, John Bruce (Tom Moore) agrees to go to work for a man who owns a chain of gambling clubs. The man sends Bruce from the South Read More

Opened Shutters

Actors: Josef Swickard, Edith Roberts, Joe Singleton, Mai Wells, Clark Comstock

Synopsis: Sylvia Lacey (Edith Roberts) is sent to relatives in New England when her irresponsible artist father dies penniless. She is sent to a farm in a small mill-town when she can't get along with the family. There she meets the overseer of the farm who looks at life in a quasi-religious and Read More

Serenade

Actors: Miriam Cooper, George Walsh, Rosita Marstini, James Marcus, Josef Swickard

Synopsis: This slow-moving, romantic adventure was certainly a family affair -- the director was Raoul Walsh, the star, Miriam Cooper, was his wife, and her co-star, George Walsh was Raoul's brother, who had recently left the Fox Studios. The story supposedly came from Maria del Carmen by Felin y Condina Read More

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Actors: Rudolph Valentino, Alice Terry, Pomeroy Cannon, Alan Hale, Nigel de Brulier, Josef Swickard, Jean Hersholt, Brinsley Shaw

Synopsis: The mystical novels of Vicente Blasco-Ibanez were much prized by ambitious silent filmmaker Rex Ingram, who filmed two of them in the 1920s, both ostensibly vehicles for his actress wife Alice Terry. The first of the two, Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, was infinitely more successful than the Read More

No Woman Knows

Synopsis: After a string of successes including Outside the Law and The Virgin of Stamboul, Universal gave director Tod Browning's next film "special" status. But Browning, perhaps, tried a little too hard to live up to that in his attempt to make Edna Ferber's story Fanny Herself seem larger than life. In Read More

Sowing the Wind

Actors: Anita Stewart, Ralph Lewis, James Morrison, Myrtle Stedman, William V. Mong

Synopsis: Rosamond Athelstane (Anita Stewart) has been raised in a convent, ignorant of the fact that the woman who claims to be her guardian (Myrtle Stedman) is actually her mother. Because of her sinful life, she has been keeping this fact a secret. When Rosamond discovers that this supposed guardian runs Read More

Who Am I?

Actors: Claire Anderson, Niles Welch, George Periolat, Josef Swickard

Synopsis: For all her life, Ruth Burns (Claire Anderson) has been kept in the dark about her father's line of work -- he is a professional gambler. She only finds out about his profession when he dies and she comes to New York to settle his affairs. One of her father's associates, Jimmy Weaver (Niles Read More

Cheated Hearts

Actors: Herbert Rawlinson, Warner Baxter, Marjorie Daw, Doris Pawn, Winter Hall

Synopsis: Although the story to this drama -- based on the novel, Barry Gordon, by William F. Payson -- was ludicrous, female filmgoers were still able to admire the virile good looks of star Herbert Rawlinson. Rawlinson is Barry Gordon, who has inherited a love of drink from his father (Joseph Swickard). Read More

Beach of Dreams

Synopsis: Instead of marrying any of her suitors, aristocratic Frenchwoman Cleo de Bromsart (Edith Storey) leaves on a cruise hosted by Prince Selm (W. Templar Powell). She does, however, tell one man, Maurice Chenet (George Fisher), that she will have an answer to his proposal when she returns. But the Read More

Moon Madness

Synopsis: Edith Storey plays a French girl who, as a child, wandered into an Arab tribe after her mother was murdered. The tribe raises her as their own, and when she reaches adulthood, the chief's son proposes to her. But she decides she'd rather run off with a French artist who brings her to Paris. After Read More

When a Woman Sins

Synopsis: Theda Bara doesn't do much vamping in her follow-up to Salome. She is Lillian Marchard, nursemaid to the lecherous Mortimer West (Joseph Swickard). While West makes disgusting advances towards Lillian, she pines for his son, Michael, who is a clergyman (Albert Roscoe). One night when the old man Read More

A Tale of Two Cities

Synopsis: One of the big hits in 1917, this epic retelling of Dicken's classic tale features exceptional production values and special effects as well as some great battle scenes as it tells the French Revolution-set tale of a pair of men who look exactly alike. Their paths cross when they discover that Read More

American Methods

Synopsis: William Farnum's features never failed to pack 'em in, no matter what the plot. In American Methods, Farnum plays a French-American who heads to the land of his ancestors to take over an iron mine he's just inherited. The French locals resent Farnum's American manners and mores (things haven't Read More

The Best of Enemies

Love, Loot and Crash

The Property Man

Actors: Charles Chaplin, Josef Swickard, Fritz Schade, Norma Nichols, Phyllis Allen

Synopsis: In Charlie Chaplin's 21st Keystone film, Chaplin is the prop man and general factotum at a vaudeville house. The artists arrive backstage as Chaplin swigs beer from a pitcher, refusing to share with his elderly, hunchbacked assistant, whom he mistreats throughout. The headliners are the Goo-Goo Read More

Caught in a Cabaret

Synopsis: Charlie Chaplin's 12th film for the Keystone company was also his directorial debut, receiving co-directing credit with co-star, Mabel Normand. Chaplin plays a waiter in a seedy cabaret who is always in trouble with his boss, Edgar Kennedy, and at odds with another waiter, Chester Conklin. While Read More

Twenty Minutes of Love

Synopsis: Charlie Chaplin once said, "All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl." In this, his 11th film for Keystone and arguably his first original screenplay, his milieu is just that -- Westlake Park, where most of the Keystone park films were shot. The Tramp makes fun of a Read More

Laughing Gas

Synopsis: Charlie Chaplin's 20th film for Keystone marks a turning point in his career. From this point on, with one exception, he was to write and direct all his future films. In Laughing Gas Chaplin plays a dentist's assistant who is first seen entering the office officiously. The patients are fooled into Read More

Iola's Promise

Actors: Alfred Paget

Synopsis: Filmed during the Biograph Company's yearly winter excursion to sunny California, this one-reel Western melodrama features Mary Pickford in the title role, as an Indian maiden rescued from her cruel captors by prospector Alfred Paget. The Indians retaliate by capturing the young man's sweetheart, Dorothy Bernard Read More