Author Archive: Retro

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.

French fantasy about a clerk’s dream adventures.

Dr. Henry Jekyll experiments with scientific means of revealing the hidden, dark side of man and releases a murderer from within himself.

Dir. Eisenstein.

The scenario follows the book closely. Tarzan’s son Jack (Korak to the apes) is kidnapped from England by Tarzan’s old enemy Paulovich. He escapes into the African jungle with the help of Paulovich’s trained ape Akut. There he meets Meriem, a white girl held by Arabs. He frees her and falls in love. Meriem (who is really an heiress) is sought by Paulovich. Tarzan arrives with Jane at his African estate and intervenes.

Feature version of the serial “Dr. Mabuse the Gambler”. English titles. Dir. Fritz Lang.

This romantic melodrama was based on the novel Peggy of Beacon Hill by Maysie Greig. Because she is so badly treated by her stepfather (James Marcus), Peggy Mason (Lillian Rich) considers marrying Joe Wheeler (Brooks Benedict), even though she does not love him. Then she inherits a thousand dollars and this enables her to become a partner in a Bohemian tea room in Boston. There she meets Douglas Wyman (Robert Frazer) and falls in love with him. When he takes her to his lodge in the woods he admits that he is already married to a faithless wife (Bonnie Hill). Peggy refuses to have anything to do with him and escapes from the lodge. She is caught in a storm and becomes very ill. While she is recuperating, she reads a newspaper item that says Wyman is being tried for the murder of his wife. Since she was killed on the night that he was [...]