Author Archive: Retro

An upper class drawing room. A gentleman breaks the curtain pole and goes in search of a replacement, but he stops into a pub first. He buys a very long pole, and causes havoc everywhere he passes, accumulating an ever-growing entourage chasing him, until he escapes them through a bit of movie magic, only to discover that the pole has already been replaced.

An anonymous donor drops a gold coin in the shoe of a homeless girl as she sleeps. A gambler with a ‘sure thing’ borrows the coin and wins a fortune, but he can’t find her again to repay he

The central figure is an old miser, who in parsimonionsness is a Harpahon. And, like Fosene, boarded his money in a secret cellar, where he met his death. We first find him begging on the. street, a young girl passes and drops her purse, which the miser picks up. When she returns to regain it he knocks her insensible and makes off. Finding a generous roll of notes in the purse, he goes to the bank to have them exchanged for gold coin. A couple of thugs witness the transaction and are at once infected by the money fever. They follow the miser to his home, the cellar, and while he sleeps they break in and are securing the money when he awakes. They pounce upon him and he is made to pay the penalty of his greed with his life. The thugs go to their own squalid hovel, which is presided over by an [...]

A noted judge is one of the most violent patients in the sanatorium until it is discovered that music has the power to quiet him. One day he escapes and going to the house of a former nurse, now the wife of a physician, he finds her alone. In his capacity as judge, he sentences her to die in five minutes. It is then by mere accident that the terror-stricken woman learns the power of music.

A son leaves to seek his fortune in the city. Many years later he returns and checks into his parents’ inn. They don’t recognize him, but noticing his fat wallet, plan to rob him.

Bing Crosby, famous on the radio but not yet in films, bumps into a girl boarding a honeymoon train; everyone mistakes them for newlyweds. Not knowing who he is, Marian claims her fianc?e is Bing Crosby. The situation begins to appeal to Bing.

What goes in to the phrase, “Let’s go to the movies”? An off-screen narrator takes us back to the earliest days of film: clips remind us of early stars and blockbusters. He explains how sound came to motion pictures: we see Jolson singing “Mammy” and John Barrymore playing Richard III. Next is a salute to the 30,000 people working in Hollywood at 272 different crafts. A montage shows us some of those jobs. It ends with a look at the physical production of celluloid (cotton and silver) and the many aspects of movie making. The narrator promises more short films about each step in production