Author Archive: Retro

A hypnotic Svengali controls the singing voice of a young starlet, but he cannot control her heart.

Silent adaptation of James Fenimore Cooper’s novel, set during the French and Indian War. Produced by Maurice Tourneur. Dir. Maurice Tourneur.

An inventor travels to the South Seas, where there is buried treasure belonging to a girl. The girl’s father is being held captive by cannibals until she returns a pearl that belongs to one of their idols.

In his fourth and final adventure, Gotham Productions’ canine star Peter the Great played a police dog chasing down a gang of bank robbers along with his master, Robert Conway (Edward Hearn). Peter discloses that one of the robbers, Jimmie Bryson (Joe Bennett), is actually forced into a life of crime by Al Stokes (Lee Shumway, the dog’s former owner. With the assistance of Robert and Jimmie’s sister Mildred (Ethel Shannon), the clever pooch catches the real criminal after an exciting automobile chase. Peter the Great was poverty row company Gotham’s answer to Warner Bros.’ world famous Rin Tin Tin. His films, although popular with the small fry, never enjoyed Rinty’s above-average budgets and wide distribution.

Wealthy cripple Markley finances the education of blacksmith’s daughter Ruth. When she returns to their small town he asks to marry her, but she runs off with city worker Jim Dirk who is then killed in a subway accident. Markley offers to marry her in name only to protect her new son.

Town idler must find the bank embezzlers who murdered a small-town bank teller, who happens to be his girlfriend’s father.

A reporter writing the story of the Average Woman, discovers he is falling for the plain Jane he is basing his story on.

Public schoolboy Roddy Berwick is expelled from school when he takes the blame for a friend’s charge and his life falls apart in a series of misadventures.

Producer Joe Schenck reportedly paid seventy-five thousand dollars (an immense sum in those days) for the film rights to the stage play written by Jane Murfin and actress Jane Cowl (as a vehicle for herself). But it was money well spent, because it was a success for his wife, Norma Talmadge, who starred. On the wedding day of Moonyeen (Talmadge) and John Carteret (Wyndham Standing), her former suitor, Jeremiah Wayne (Harrison Ford), kills her. Carteret, as a result, grows into a bitter old man. He winds up raising his niece Kathleen, who grows up to look exactly like Moonyeen (because she’s also played by Talmadge). When she falls in love with Kenneth Wayne, the nephew of the hated Jeremiah (Ford once again), Carteret does everything he can to oppose the match. But love wins out in the end, both in real life with the young people, and in the spirit world, when Carteret’s dead sweetheart [...]