Author Archive: Retro

The story to this sea melodrama was written by Byron Morgan. Morgan was best known for the fast-paced auto tales he wrote for Wallace Reid, so this was quite a departure for him. When Bruce McDow (Rod LaRocque) refuses to go aloft to fix a rigging during a storm, and he is branded a coward. McDow believes his lack of courage is hereditary because many years before his father had taken his lightship into harbor during a storm instead of aiding a passenger liner; as a result, the liner wrecked. Because of this, Captain Hayden (George Fawcett) hates the name McDow. Hayden’s daughter, Jenny (Jacqueline Logan), however, has faith in Bruce. She helps him get a job as mate on a lightship and once again a storm blows. Captain Hayden loses a propeller while bringing his ship in. Jenny, meanwhile, has come to meet him in a yacht which goes on the rocks. Both Bruce [...]

Railroad station agent Dan Kurrie is fired from his job by his rival in love, Joseph Garber. Believed false by the girl he loves, Margaret , Kurrie must prove himself by unmasking a gang of bandits preying on the trains.

Tired of city life, family takes a cross-country trip by automobile to the West, and comedic meyhem ensues. Dir. Stanley Donen.

Bebe Daniels is Colette Girard, a French actress who is traveling to London to visit her friend Gloria (Diana Kane). On the train she meets Gloria’s fiancé, Bob Hawley (Kenneth MacKenna). Hawley is posing as his friend, Larry Charters (Robert Frazer), a musician who is trying to dodge his many female fans. Colette and Hawley get left at a station and they ask the town’s mayor where they can spend the night. The mayor misunderstands and marries them. Since Hawley has written Charters’ name on the license (which he mistook for a hotel register), Colette isn’t sure whom she is married to. Back in Paris, Charters meets Colette and is immediately taken with her, but when his friend Bertie Bird (Raymond Griffith) shows up with a couple of young women, a lot of confusion ensues. Then Gloria arrives for more mix-ups. Colette has fallen for Charters herself, and after testing his love (and accidentally winding [...]

Mountain film on ski racing. Makes a good companion piece with Riefenstahl’s “The Sacred Mountain”. English titles. Dir. Burgess Meredith.

In his first feature, Lloyd joins the Navy to prove his worth to his girlfriend’s father, and ends up rescuing her from the clutches of a evil maharajah in the Far East. With original music score by Blaine L. Gale. Dir. Walter Forde.

Directed by Oscar Micheaux and designed especially for black audiences, this silent romance flirts with the notion of miscegenation — the hatred of inter-racial relations. The trouble begins when a dark-skinned black finds himself avoiding the affections of a light-skinned woman because he thinks she is white. It takes quite a bit of convincing for her to prove him wrong.

Honey Skinner is proud of her successful husband. When he tells her he’s going to ask for a raise, she knows he’ll get it. He asks his boss just as their big client announces he’s not renewing his contract. He doesn’t get the raise, but he’s too embarrassed to tell his wife the truth. She starts making plans to spend that extra $10 a week; the first thing is a new dress suit for him and a new outfit for her so they can fit in at a swanky party. They’re the hit of the party, and Honey is embraced by the ‘smart set.’ Meanwhile, business is bad and Skinner loses his job. The tailor is after him for payment on the suit, and Honey is still spending the salary he doesn’t have.

Just out of jail and vowing to go straight, former jewel thief Boston Blackie undertakes the reformation of a pretty blonde who has stolen a necklace from a cabaret dancer. He learns that the jewel belongs to the mother of the blonde girl, and the blonde’s philandering father gave it as a gift to the cabaret girl. Blackie must find a way to return the necklace to the owner’s safe without arousing the suspicions of the girl’s family.