Author Archive: Retro

Adulterous story of infidelity and misunderstandings. Dir. Lois Weber.

Max Linder directs and stars as Dart-In-Again is this comedy spoof on The Three Musketeers. The three swordsmen are portrayed by members of the Mezotti acrobatic troupe. Bull Montana is King Rich-Lou, with Frank Cooke as King Louis XIII and Catherine Rankin as the Queen. Her majesty is aided by the lady-in-waiting Connie (Jobyna Ralston). Ralston would later be a leading lady for Harold Lloyd in many features in the 1920’s, and this performance is her film debut. This was the last American film made by the talented comic before he returned to France. Tragically, he was plagued by severe depression that ultimately led to his suicide — and the suicide of his 21-year-old wife Helen Peters — on October 30, 1925. Charlie Chaplin listed Linder as one of his greatest comic heroes and helped with the promotion and distribution of this feature. When the film failed to do well at the box office, Linder [...]

Shopgirl is told by a fortune teller that she is a Spanish princess reincarnated, and the young girl’s imagination runs rampant.

William Russell plays a prizefighter with both eyes on the heavyweight crown. Russell’s nephew is freckle-faced Mickey Bennett, who idolizes his uncle to the nth degree. On the eve of the Big Fight, gangsters kidnap Bennett and order Russell to throw the fight. But the resourceful Bennett manages to escape his captors, and all’s well when the final bell rings. Julanne Johnston costars as a social worker who falls in love with likeable lug Russell.

Young John Gallagher wants to be a newspaper reporter. One day he witnesses a murder committed by a mysterious man with only four fingers on one hand. He gives his account of the murder and a description of the killer to his hero, newsman Henry Callahan, resulting in his getting a job on the paper as an office boy. When circumstances arise that result in Callahan losing his job on the paper, he and Gallagher set out to discover the identity of the killer and help Callahan get his job back.

After killing her treacherous step-father, a girl tries to escape the country with a young vagabond. She dresses as a boy, they hop freight trains, quarrel with a group of hobos, and steal a car in their attempt to escape the police, and reach Canada.

Prudence Cole is an unsophisticated Quaker girl being raised by her two aunts. Prudence is flirted with by snobbish Henry Garrison, who actually disdains the girl for her lack of worldliness and savoir faire. When Henry and his friends try to embarrass her at a posh resort, Prudence turns the tables on them.

This rarely seen, silent religious feature was produced by the Catholic Art Association. After making it big on Wall Street, John Harden boasts that he is the master of his own fate and believes in neither God nor the Devil. Needless to say, he pays mightily for this hubris. His family is reduced to poverty, his friends desert him, and things turn from bad to worse until his childhood faith is restored.