Author Archive: Retro

Max discovers that in the same apartment house with him lives a most charming woman doctor. To meet her he fakes a sickness and calls upon her for professional advice. She thumps him, puts her little ear down to his chest, diagnoses his case and prescribes for him. Max departs so full of happiness that he finds difficulty in walking as a sober man should. The days pass and, winning the lady’s love, Max becomes married to her. On the wedding night just as they have reached the seclusion of their own room and Max has started to pour out his rapture into her willing ear, the servant hammers at their door. They find that the bride is called out upon a case, so in wedding gown and orange blossoms she leaves the despondent Max to await her return. The time passes and finally she returns, but only for a moment. The servant raps at [...]

THE NINETY AND NINE was one of the workhouse melodramas of the early 20th century, in which a plot involves a mysterious stranger, a beautiful and virtuous local maid and a village idiot, ending in a spectacular set-piece of high risk. In BEN HUR it is the chariot race. In BLUE JEANS its the girl tied to the railroad tracks. In this one, Mysterious Stranger Warner Baxter is hiding out to avoid family scandal as a murder suspect on the turkey farm owned by Colleen Moore’s mother. Things are falling apart, but eventually a neighboring hamlet is ablaze and it’s up to Mr. Baxter to drive a locomotive through the flames and rescue the innocent; after which all plot points are resolved instantly.

An intrepid reporter and his loyal friend battle a bizarre secret society of criminals known as The Vampires.

A cook has his hands full with three mischievous devils, who pop in and out of his kitchen.

John Howard Payne at his most miserable point in life, writes a song which becomes popular and inspires other people at some point in their lives.

Industrial film depicting the Elgin Watch Factory in Elgin, Illinois, and showing each step in the making of an Elgin watch.

Set in the late 1790s, a depiction of Irish villagers rebelling against British occupation (Red Coats) over the right to bear arms.