Matthew BetzFilmography

The Law Commands

Actors: Tom Keene, Budd Buster, Matthew Betz, Robert Fiske

Synopsis: Directed competently by the veteran William Nigh, this ultra low-budget Western from diminutive Crescent Pictures Corp. features something as unusual as a hero who is also a medical doctor. The Homestead Act of 1862 not yet enforced in Johnson County, Iowa, the local homesteaders find themselves Read More

Jail Bait

Actors: Buster Keaton

The Outcast

Actors: Warren William, Karen Morley, Richard Carle, Jackie Moran

Synopsis: Warren William stars as Dr. Phillip Wendel Jones, a doctor whose patient dies under questionable circumstances. He is acquitted of murder, but is discredited in the eyes of his community. Dr. Jones settles in another town under an assumed name, where he sets up practice and falls in love with Read More

Fury Below

Actors: Russell Gleason, Maxine Doyle, LeRoy Mason, Sheila Terry, Matthew Betz

Synopsis: Russell Gleason, the personable and talented son of actors James and Lucille Gleason, is afforded a rare starring role in the bottom-budgeted Fury Below. The story centers on a group of courageous miners, digging away despite innumerable dangers and mishaps. Gleason is cast as mine operator Jim Read More

The Little Red Schoolhouse

Actors: Frank Coghlan, Jr., Dickie Moore, Ann Doran, Lloyd Hughes

Synopsis: Two of Hollywood's finest juvenile actors, Frank Coghlan Jr. and Dickie Moore, top the cast of The Little Red Schoolhouse. Coghlan plays orphaned Frank Burke, who drops out of school and heads to New York City in the company of his faithful dog. He soon learns that life in the Big City is a bit Read More

Florida Special

Actors: Jack Oakie, Sally Eilers, Kent Taylor, Frances Drake, John Farrell MacDonald

Synopsis: A Florida-bound train is filled with romance and intrigue in this comedy. Among the passengers is a millionaire bon vivant carrying $1 million in diamonds. He is fully aware that a gang of would-be jewel thieves have followed him and so pretends to be an invalid with an ice bag perpetually stuck 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

Just My Luck

The E-Flat Man

Actors: Buster Keaton, Dorothea Kent

Synopsis: Buster Keaton is on the lam from the law in this Educational two-reeler. He attempts to elope with his fiancée (Dorothea Kent), but they escape her parents by driving off in a car that's actually owned by a wanted gangster. When they hear on the radio that the police are looking for them, they Read More

On Probation

Synopsis: Fearing that her unsavory past will be revealed, a young girl is prepared to kill her erstwhile benefactor in this hectic low-budget thriller directed by former serial star Charles Hutchison. A young child, Jane (Betty Jane Graham), is caught pick-pocketing and custody is awarded to crooked Read More

The Girl Who Came Back

Actors: Shirley Grey, Noel Madison, Matthew Betz

Synopsis: Shirley Grey plays The Girl Who Came Back in this Chesterfield Pictures "special". Grey is cast as Gilda, a former gun moll who turns her back on her crooked past and heads west to start life anew. Under an assumed name, she gets a job as a bank teller, only to be reunited with her former gangland Read More

Trails of the Wild

Actors: Kermit Maynard, Billie Seward, Fuzzy Knight, Monte Blue, Theodore Von Eltz

Synopsis: Ostensibly based on James Oliver Curwood's Caryl of the Mountain, but bearing little or no resemblance to the 1935 Rin-Tin-Tin Jr. vehicle bearing that title, this Northwest melodrama stars Kermit Maynard as McKenna, a mounted police officer trailing the gang that kidnapped mining engineer Mason Read More

Let 'em Have It

Actors: Richard Arlen, Virginia Bruce, Alice Brady, Bruce Cabot, Harvey Stephens

Synopsis: Produced independently by Edward Small, this surprisingly realistic gangster yarn stars stalwart Richard Arlen as Mal Stevens, an attorney recruited by the newly organized Federal Bureau of Investigation. After Mal and a couple of fellow recruits, Van Rensseler (Harvey Stephens) and Tex Logan Read More

Mississippi

Actors: Bing Crosby, W.C. Fields, Joan Bennett, Queenie Smith, Gail Patrick

Synopsis: In this comedy with musical numbers set in the Old South, Bing Crosby plays a singer (talk about a casting stretch!) from Philadelphia named Tom Grayson, who has fallen in love with Southern heiress Elvira Rumford (Gail Patrick). Tom wants to marry Elvira, but a man called Major Patterson (John Miljan Read More

Mutiny Ahead

Synopsis: When a playboy becomes entangled in the affairs of gamblers he eventually locates an underwater treasure. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

Reckless Roads

Actors: Judith Allen, Regis Toomey, Lloyd Hughes, Ben Alexander, Louise Carter

Synopsis: Produced by parsimonious Majestic Pictures, Reckless Roads stars Regis Toomey as perennial wise-guy Speed Demming. To gain access to haughty heroine Edith Adams (Judith Allen), Speed poses as a reporter and for a long while gets away with it. He also manages to dissuade young Wade Adams (Ben Alexander Read More

The Fighting Coward

Synopsis: Based on a Peter B. Kyne short story, The Final Assignment (which was also the film's alternate title), Fighting Coward features silent-screen star William Farnum as Jim Horton, a former prison inmate falsely accused of killing a district attorney. Although engaged to his boss' daughter Marie Read More

The Fighting Rookie

Synopsis: After being framed in a warehouse robbery, a police officer goes undercover as a drunk in order to get the goods on the real culprit in this low-budget affair from Mayfair Pictures Corp. starring Jack La Rue. Arriving at the resort owned and operated by the suspect in the warehouse case, Louis Read More

The Countess of Monte Cristo

Actors: Fay Wray, Paul Lukas, Reginald Owen, Patsy Kelly, Paul Page

Synopsis: One of the lesser-known directorial efforts of cinematographer Karl Freund, The Countess of Monte Cristo stars Fay Wray as the title character. A lowly extra in a Viennese movie studio, young Janet (Wray) gets fed up with her lot in life. Hoping to have one final fling before trudging off to the Read More

Men of the Night

Actors: Bruce Cabot, Judith Allen, Ward Bond, Charles Sabin, John Kelly

Synopsis: Columbia Pictures workhorse Lambert Hillyer was both writer and director of Men of the Night. Bruce Cabot plays Kelly, a Hollywood detective, assigned to capture a holdup gang. While dallying with carhop Mary (Judith Allen), Kelly jumps to the hasty conclusion that the girl is somehow tied in with Read More

The Mystery of the Wax Museum

Actors: Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Glenda Farrell, Frank McHugh, Allen Vincent, Gavin Gordon

Synopsis: The Mystery of the Wax Museum begins in London in the 1920s. Lionel Atwill plays Ivan Igor, a brilliant sculptor who manages a wax museum. Regarding his historical creations as his friends, Igor refuses the entreaties of his business partner, Joe Worth (Edwin Maxwell), to turn his labor-of-love Read More

After Midnight

Actors: Alan Dinehart, Gertrude Astor, Matthew Betz, Eddie Boland

Synopsis: I Have Lived takes place in a New York penthouse, a Broadway theater, and a seedy speakeasy, though not necessarily in that order. Alan Dinehart essays one of his rare leading roles as Thomas Langley, a brilliant playwright whose career has taken off like a skyrocket. Experiencing an attack of Read More

The Big Chance

Actors: John Darrow, Merna Kennedy, Mickey Rooney, Matthew Betz

Synopsis: Eagle Productions was another of those exotically named independent studios that came and went in the early 1930s. Eagle's The Big Chance stars John Darrow as an aspiring boxer. Ignoring the advice of trainer Matthew Betz, Darrow falls among bad company. Faithful Merna Kennedy saves Darrow from Read More

Via Pony Express

Actors: Lane Chandler, Marceline Day, Julian Rivero, Matthew Betz, Doris Hill

Synopsis: Former silent screen cowboy star Jack Hoxie played a Pony Express rider in this, the fourth of six low-budget oaters produced by Majestic. Delivering a valuable deed to El Rio Rancho, Buck Carson (Hoxie) is ambushed by Clem Porter (Matthew Betz) and his gang, who steal the deed. Meanwhile, at El Read More

The Whirlwind

Synopsis: A decidedly minor entry in Tim McCoy's Western oeuvre, The Whirlwind was released in the middle of McCoy's unsuccessful "straight" melodramas. Tim played Tim (as he almost always did), a rodeo rider returning to his hometown of Sagebrush only to find the place run by power-hungry sheriff Tate Read More

Under Secret Orders

Actors: Donald Dillaway, John Farrell MacDonald, Nina Quartero, Phyllis Barrington, Don Alvarado

Synopsis: A minor entry from small-scale Progressive Pictures, Under Secret Orders starred the rather pallid Donald Dillaway as Henry Ames, a bank employee assigned to bring valuable bonds from San Francisco to a client, Franklyn Lawrence (Lafe McKee), in South America. En route, Henry hits the bottle once Read More

Tarzan the Fearless [Serial]

Actors: Larry "Buster" Crabbe, Jacqueline Wells, E. Alyn Warren, Edward Woods, Philo McCullough

Synopsis: If MGM could cast an Olympic champion it its Tarzan series, so could Sol Lesser's Principal Pictures. Thus it was that Larry "Buster" Crabbe, gold-medal winner for the 400 meter free-style swimming event in the 1932 L.A. Olympics, played the title role in Principal's 15-chapter serial Tarzan the Read More

State Trooper

Actors: Regis Toomey, Evelyn Knapp, Raymond Hatton, Matthew Betz, Edwin Maxwell

Synopsis: In this crime drama, a highway patrolman gives an oil magnate a ticket. He later quits the force to begin working for the tycoon as a guard for the refinery. He is to prevent gangsters from sabotaging the operation for the duration of a price war. In the end he single-handedly defends the refinery Read More

Western Code

Actors: Tim McCoy, Nora Lane, Wheeler Oakman, Mischa Auer

Synopsis: An average entry in Columbia Pictures' Tim McCoy Western series, The Western Code features perennial Bad Guy Wheeler Oakman as Nick Grindle, a crooked saloon keeper who marries lovely Polly Loomis' mother for her money. The woman dies leaving everything to Grindle while Polly (Nora Lane) and her Read More

Broadway to Cheyenne

Actors: Marceline Day, Matthew Betz, Huntly Gordon, Roy D'Arcy, Robert Ellis

Synopsis: Also known as From Broadway to Cheyenne, this Rex Bell vehicle is an excellent amalgam of the western and gangster genres. Bell stars as a frontier detective who finds out that the territory has been invaded by a mob of New York gangsters. Displaying their usual strong-arm tactics, the villains Read More

Speed Madness

Actors: Lucien Littlefield, Charles Sellon, Nancy Drexel, Pat O'Malley, Huntly Gordon

Synopsis: In this drama, the son of a shipping tycoon is left to reflect upon his life after his lover abandons him. He decides that it is time he pulled his weight and did something useful and so begins working on a new boat to help his father's financially foundering company. He decides to enter his new Read More

The Hurricane Express [Serial]

Synopsis: The second of two projected John Wayne serials produced by genre expert Mascot Pictures, this film used the budget-saving device of having its master criminal wearing variously fiendish rubber masks, offering him the opportunity to resemble every red herring in the large cast. Known only as "The Read More

Gold

Actors: Jack Hoxie, Alice Day, Jack Clifford, Hooper Atchley

Synopsis: The second of six sound Westerns starring Jack Hoxie and produced by poverty row company Majestic, this film, like most B-Westerns at the time, features long stretches of what for all intents and purposes is silent action briefly interrupted by somewhat awkward dialogue sequences. Jack (Hoxie) and Read More

Alias Mary Smith

Actors: Blanche Mehaffey, Myrtle Stedman, Edmund Breese, Alec B. Francis

Synopsis: Alias Mary Smith might have been completely forgotten were it not for the diligent efforts of "B"-picture aficionado John Cocchi, who in such books as Second Feature has elevated this unintentionally hilarious cheapie to near-classic status. John Darrow plays a bibulous playboy who rescues Read More

The Fighting Marshal

Actors: Tim McCoy, Dorothy Gulliver, Matthew Betz, Mary Carr, Pat O'Malley

Synopsis: Tim McCoy is falsely accused of killing his own father in this typical low-budget oater directed by the generally efficient but unexciting D. Ross Lederman. Framed in the killing of his own father, Tim Benton (McCoy) escapes from prison along with brutish Red Larkin (Matthew Betz). The fugitives Read More

Dynamite Denny

Actors: Blanche Mehaffey, William V. Mong, Walter Perry, Matthew Betz

Synopsis: Though ordered to walk off his job by his union, Dynamite Denny (Jay Wilsey, aka Buffalo Bill Jr.) loyally remains at his post and is blacklisted as a result. As luck would have it, Denny befriends an itinerant fireman (William V. Mong) -- who turns out to be the chairman of the board of the Read More

Side Show

Actors: Winnie Lightner, Charles Butterworth, Evelyn Knapp, Donald Cook, Guy Kibbee

Synopsis: The delightful Winnie Lightner was afforded her own movie vehicle in Side Show. Lightner stars as Pat, one of several members of a traveling carnival troupe managed by the eternally besotted Colonel Gowdy (Guy Kibbee). A Jill-of-all-trades, Pat does everything from high-diving to hula dancing Read More

Single Sin

Synopsis: In this comedy, a lady-bootlegger does her 90 days in jail, gets released and becomes the secretary for a prominent millionaire. The magnate falls madly in love with his new secretary and they marry. Unfortunately, she has not revealed her shady past to him, and when friends from her smuggling Read More

Soul of the Slums

Actors: Blanche Mehaffey, Matthew Betz, Murray Smith

Synopsis: A dedicated priest sets up a mission in the slums of a great metropolitan city, hoping to clean up the community by cleansing the souls of its denizens. The plot concentrates on one of these unfortunates, a falsely accused convict played by William Collier Jr. Released from jail, Collier returns Read More

Salvation Nell

Actors: Ralph Graves, Helen Chandler, Sally O'Neil, Jason Robards, Sr., DeWitt Jennings

Synopsis: In this religious (but not overbearingly so) drama, a good man gets involved with a woman who wants to marry the man who impregnated her. When the lout refuses, her good friend intervenes to defend her and accidently kills the other. As a result he is imprisoned for five years. Following his Read More

The Wide Open Spaces

See America Thirst

Actors: Harry Langdon, George "Slim" Summerville, Bessie Love, Mitchell Lewis, Matthew Betz

Synopsis: Silent-screen comedian Harry Langdon was the darling of the critics in 1927, but his career quickly lost momentum, and by the time talkies came in, Langdon was considered a has-been, reduced to starring in 2-reelers for comedy producer Hal Roach. In 1930, he made a feature-film comeback bid in a Read More

Shooting Straight

Actors: Richard Dix, Mary Lawlor, James Neill, Matthew Betz, George Cooper

Synopsis: In this lively drama, a gambler believes he has killed a man and so boards the first train out of town. Unfortunately, a crash ensues and the wounded fugitive ends up recuperating at the home of a minister who has mistaken the card sharp for a traveling evangelist. The opportunistic gambler begins Read More

The Big House

Actors: Chester Morris, Wallace Beery, Robert Montgomery, Leila Hyams, Lewis Stone

Synopsis: Not the first of the prison pictures, but the one that truly put the genre on the map. Playboy Kent (Robert Montgomery), driving drunk, kills a couple of pedestrians and is sentenced to a 10-year manslaughter term. His cellmate is forger Morgan (Chester Morris), a tough but essentially decent con; Read More

Her Man

Actors: Helen Twelvetrees, Marjorie Rambeau, Ricardo Cortez, Phillips Holmes, James Gleason

Synopsis: Helen Twelvetrees became a major star in this laundered version of the "naughty" Broadway play Frankie and Johnny. A singer in a Havana dive, Frankie is fought over by the proprietor, Johnny (Ricardo Cortez), and Dan O'Keefe (Phillips Holmes), an American sailor who sees some good in the girl. Read More

The Squealer

Actors: Dorothy Revier, Jack Holt, Davey Lee, Matt Moore, ZaSu Pitts

Synopsis: In this crime melodrama, a bootlegger orders the death of his rival. Meanwhile the bootlegger's wife dallies with his best friend. Following the hit, the gangster is arrested. Believing that his best pal ratted on him, he busts out of jail and goes looking for revenge. It is then he discovers that Read More

The Girl in the Glass Cage

Actors: Loretta Young, Matthew Betz, Lucien Littlefield, Charles Sellon, Julia Swayne Gordon

Synopsis: In her second talking picture, Loretta Young stars as Gladys Cosgrove, the ticket-taker at a small-town movie house. Although she's sweet on socialite Terry Pomfret (Carrol Nye), Gladys is ardently pursued by gangster Doc Striker (Matthew Betz). This results in a loud and very public confrontation Read More

Girls Gone Wild

Actors: Sue Carol, Nick Stuart, William Russell, Roy D'Arcy, John Darrow

Synopsis: In this drama, a young woman gets angry when her boyfriend's father, a motorcycle cop, stops her for speeding, refuses her bribe, and makes her go to court. She is so angry that she dumps her beau. Later, the wild young woman is dancing with a renowned bootlegger at a dance on the seamy side of Read More

Fugitives

Actors: Madge Bellamy, Don Terry, Arthur Stone, Earl Foxe

Synopsis: Accused of murdering her employer, nightclub vocalist Alice Carroll (Madge Bellamy) is vigorously prosecuted in court by ambitious young DA Dick Starr (Don Terry). After Alice is sent to prison, however, Starr begins having second thoughts. He ends up helping her escape from jail so that she can Read More

The Terror

Actors: May McAvoy, Louise Fazenda, Edward Everett Horton, Alec B. Francis, Matthew Betz

Telling the World

Actors: William Haines, Anita Page, Eileen Percy, Frank Currier, Polly Moran

Sins of the Fathers

Actors: Emil Jannings, ZaSu Pitts, Jean Arthur, Barry Norton, Jack Luden

Synopsis: The great German actor Emil Jannings closed out the American phase of his film career with the Paramount part-talkie Sins of the Fathers. Jannings is cast as Wilhelm Spangler, who works as a head waiter to provide for his pregnant wife (ZaSu Pitts). As their family grows and grows, Spangler Read More

The Wedding March

Actors: Erich Von Stroheim, Fay Wray, George Fawcett, George Nichols, ZaSu Pitts, Maude George

Synopsis: Having alienated virtually all the major Hollywood studios, filmmaker Erich Von Stroheim turned to independent entrepreneur Pat Powers for funding for his 1927 epic The Wedding March. Set during the Austro-Hungarian Hapsburg regime, the film stars director Von Stroheim as wastrelly Prince Nikki Read More

The Big City

Actors: James Murray, Lon Chaney, Marceline Day, Betty Compson, Matthew Betz

Synopsis: The Big City was perhaps the most "normal" of the Lon Chaney-Tod Browning collaborations. Minus makeup, Chaney plays gangster boss Chuck Collins, who despite his ruthlessness is a basically decent fellow. Collins is plagued by a rival gang, led by deceptively boyish Curly (James Murray), who has Read More

The Crimson City

Actors: Myrna Loy, Leila Hyams, John Miljan, Richard Tucker

Synopsis: Onoto (Myrna Loy) is slated to be sold to a wealthy Mandarin, but is rescued from the auction block by white fugitive from justice Gregory Kent (John Miljan). Onoto falls in love with Kent, and he with her, but this is 1928, and marriage between races is still taboo. Gallantly, Onoto forsakes Kent Read More

Shepherd of the Hills

Actors: Alec B. Francis, Molly O'Day, John Boles, Matthew Betz, Romaine Fielding

Synopsis: Previously filmed in 1920, Harold Bell Wright's "backwoods" novel Shepherd of the Hills was remade in 1928. The story is motivated by a drought which threatens the well-being of every resident of an Ozark ranching community. Into this situation steps the Shepherd of the Hills (Alec B. Francis), a Read More

The Patent Leather Kid

Actors: Richard Barthelmess, Molly O'Day, Arthur Stone, Lawford Davidson, Matthew Betz

Synopsis: Such was Richard Barthelmess' popularity in 1927 that audiences were willing to sit through all 12 reels (approximately 130 minutes) of The Patent Leather Kid. Barthelmess plays a cocky prizefighter who isn't the least bit concerned when America enters World War 1. Doing his best to avoid the Read More

The Little Irish Girl

Actors: Dolores Costello, John Harron, Matthew Betz, Lee Moran, Gertrude Claire

Synopsis: The Little Irish Girl is Dot Walker (Dolores Costello), the pretty come-on for a tawdry gambling house. Dot lures country boy Johnny (John Harron) into the den of iniquity, where he loses his life savings. Seemingly undaunted, Johnny invites the crooked gamblers to his home, where they are Read More

Shipwrecked

Actors: Seena Owen, Joseph Schildkraut, Matthew Betz, Clarence Burton, Laska Winter

Synopsis: Former D.W. Griffith associate Joseph Henaberry handled the directorial reins in Shipwrecked. Based on a popular stage play, the story takes place on board a ship bound for the South Seas. One of the passengers is escaped criminal Seena Owen, who falls in love with galley hand Joseph Schildkraut. Read More

Oh, What a Nurse

Synopsis: Sydney Chaplin, the talented brother (and business manger) of Charlie Chaplin, had scored a hit in the female-impersonation comedy Charley's Aunt, prompting Warner Bros. to cast him in another "drag" epic, Oh! What a Nurse. Chaplin is cast as newspaper reporter Jerry Clark, who falls in love with Read More

The Exquisite Sinner

Actors: Conrad Nagel, Renée Adorée, Paulette Duval, Frank Currier, George K. Arthur

Synopsis: Josef von Sternberg had been the original director of Exquisite Sinner, but MGM was dissatisfied with the picture and refused to release it. When the film finally surfaced in 1926 (a full year after its completion), it had been radically altered by staff director Phil Rosen. Adapted by Alice Duer Miller Read More

Way of a Girl

Actors: Eleanor Boardman, Matt Moore, William Russell, Matthew Betz, Charles French

Synopsis: The Summons by Katherine Newlin Burt made for such tired movie material that director Robert G. Vignola and scenarist Albert Shelby LeVino decided to have some fun with it. The film version of this boy-gets-girl tale begins in LeVino's office, where he is trying to come up with a screenplay that Read More

The Unholy Three

Actors: Lon Chaney, Mae Busch, Matt Moore, Victor McLaglen, Harry Earles

Synopsis: Although Lon Chaney and director Tod Browning had made a couple of films together earlier in their careers, this unique melodrama marked the beginning of a string of chilling, macabre silent films, which included West of Zanzibar, The Unknown, and The Black Bird. Chaney is Echo, a sideshow Read More

White Fang

Synopsis: This rugged melodrama was based on Jack London's last novel. Joe Holland (Walter Perry) is the superintendent of the Lucky 13 mine. Gold ore has been missing lately, and he's trying to discover who the culprit is. He rescues his sick friend, Weadon Scott (Theodore Von Eltz), from wolves. Scott Read More

White Desert

Actors: Claire Windsor, Pat O'Malley, Robert W. Frazer, Frank Currier

Synopsis: Although MGM was known for its streamlined, quality pictures, that didn't mean all its product was glossy, high-budget stuff. Take, for example, this programmer -- a summer release about the frozen north (in the days before air conditioning, snow films were popular releases during the hot months Read More

My Lady's Lips

Actors: Frank Keenan, Clara Bow, William Powell, Matthew Betz

Synopsis: Few leading ladies appeared in as many films in 1926 as the vivacious Clara Bow. In My Lady's Lips, Bow plays the feisty daughter of newspaper magnate Frank Keenan. And that's about all she does, since the bulk of the film concerns the trials and tribulations of female crook Alyce Mills. For the Read More

Lights of Old Broadway

Actors: Conrad Nagel, Frank Currier, George K. Arthur, Marion Davies

Synopsis: Because Little Old New York was so successful, MGM and newspaper/sometime film magnate William Randolph Hearst decided to put Marion Davies into another picturesque tale of New York in the 1800s -- this time a few decades later, circa 1870. The idea actually worked. The film, based on the Laurence Read More

The Only Woman

Actors: Norma Talmadge, Eugene O'Brien, Edwards Davis, Winter Hall, Matthew Betz

Synopsis: Although Norma Talmadge was at the height of her stardom, she was not immune to poor material, nor was veteran screenwriter C. Gardner Sullivan immune from writing it. The overused theme for this drama involves a young woman who marries to save the family fortune, and not even Talmadge could bring Read More

Heart Bandit

Actors: Viola Dana, Milton Sills, Gertrude Claire, Wallace MacDonald, Bertram Grassby

Synopsis: Although Milton Sills was a leading man in his own right, he also supported many female stars of the silent era. In this crime drama he plays second fiddle to spunky Viola Dana. As "Angel Face Molly" O'Hara, Dana plays a part that is quite familiar to her fans -- that of a girl crook who reforms. Read More

The Lighthouse by the Sea

Actors: Louise Fazenda, William Collier, Jr., Matthew Betz

Synopsis: Based on a play by Owen Davis, Lighthouse By the Sea top-bills Warner Bros.' most successful male star of 1924: dauntless doggy Rin-Tin-Tin. The "human" plot involves the efforts by the daughter (Louise Fazenda) of an aged lighthouse keeper (Charles Hill Mailes) to hide the fact that her father Read More

Love's Whirlpool

Actors: Lila Lee, James Kirkwood, Madge Bellamy

Synopsis: The off-screen husband-and-wife team of James Kirkwood and Lila Lee played just that in this silent crook melodrama from low-budget Regal Pictures. They are both hardened criminals, however, and when Kirkwood's younger brother (Robert Agnew) is killed during a prison break, they kidnap the Read More

Siren of Seville

Actors: Priscilla Dean, Allan Forrest, Stuart Holmes, Claire de Lorez, Bert Woodruff

Synopsis: Priscilla Dean's star was beginning to fade around the time she appeared as a passionate Andulusian peasant in this drama. Young Gallito (Allan Forrest) wants very badly to become a matador. His sweetheart, Dolores (Dean), does everything she can to help him and she wheedles Pedro, a renowned Read More

Those Who Dance

Actors: Blanche Sweet, Bessie Love, Warner Baxter, Robert Agnew

Synopsis: This melodrama was personally supervised by producer Thomas Ince, and, depending on how one looked at it, it was either anti-alcohol, or against the Volstead Act, which caused the bootlegging of bad liquor. Mary Kane (Lucille Ricksen) is killed during a wreck when the boy driving the car in which Read More

Luck

Actors: Johnny Hines, Violet Mersereau, Edmund Breese, Robert Edeson

Synopsis: Light comedian Johnny Hines specialized in entertaining, action-packed films, and this is one of the snappiest of the bunch. Hines has the support of some of the best comic talent of the era, including Charlie Murray, Polly Moran, and Flora Finch. The story is built on a slippery foundation of Read More

Self-Made Wife

Synopsis: This poorly made domestic drama was called "a program picture for program theaters" by trade paper Motion Picture News. Tim and Corrie Goodwin (Crauford Kent and Ethel Grey Terry) are a poverty-stricken married couple. But all that changes when Goodwin strikes it rich with an oil well. He quickly Read More

Let's Go!

Actors: Richard Talmadge, Eileen Percy, George Nichols, Tully Marshall, Bruce Gordon

Synopsis: Silent screen stunt-man Richard Talmadge also produced this fine action melodrama, one of the few of his starring films to be extant. The former acrobat and stunt double for Douglas Fairbanks plays Barry Macklin, the supposedly worthless son of a cement factory owner (John Steppling). Assigned to Read More

Sawdust

Actors: Gladys Walton, Niles Welch, Frank Brownlee

Synopsis: This routine circus drama was a typical rags-to-riches vehicle for minor Universal Studios star Gladys Walton. Nita Moore (Walton) travels around the country with her parents, who are circus performers. After their death, Nita finds herself at the mercy of the circus' vicious ring master, Pop Read More

My Old Kentucky Home

Actors: Sigrid Holmquist, Monte Blue, Arthur Edmund Carewe, Julia Swayne Gordon

Synopsis: Other than the title, this horseracing melodrama had little to do with the Stephen Foster song. Kentucky native Richard Goodloe (Monte Blue) goes to New York to make his fortune, but instead he winds up in Sing Sing, convicted of a crime he did not commit. After two years, he returns home, hiding Read More

Burn 'em up Barnes

Actors: Johnny Hines, Edmund Breese, George Fawcett, J. Barney Sherry

Synopsis: After making a hit in the Torchy series of two-reelers, Johnny Hines chose this lively picture as his first full-length comedy. It was one of the year's hits. Young Barnes (Hines) is called "Burn 'Em Up" because of his love for fast driving, both on the track and on the street -- much to the Read More

Salvation Nell

Actors: Pauline Starke, Joseph King, Gypsy O'Brien, Edward Langford, Evelyn C. Carrington

Synopsis: Nell Sanders (Pauline Starke) has grown up on New York's Lower East Side. While working in a sweatshop she becomes involved with Jim Platt (Joseph King), who is a hopeless alcoholic . She loses her job and is forced to scrub floors at a saloon owned by Sid McGovern (Charles McDonald). Sid's Read More

One Wonderful Night

Synopsis: Although already a matinee idol, handsome Francis X. Bushman reportedly won the leading role in this very popular adventure melodrama by winning The Ladies' World's highly publicized "Hero Contest." Bushman played John Delancey Curtis, an American railroad magnate who saves the beautiful Lady Read More

Night Hawks

Trinkets of Tragedy