A Citrate Special )



A Man's Size Pet (1926)
Running Time: 17 mins Black and White
Starring: Ben Corbett, Gilbert Holmes, Nancy Drexel
This one is about two buckaroos who dump flour on each other and roll each other around in barrels, their girlfriends -- one pretty, the other fat -- and the pretty one's bear, Danger -- when you're good looking, people put up with an awful lot. It's fast, it's silly, it's uncomplicated. Good enough.

CHEER UP (1924)
Running Time: 10 mins Black and White
Starring: Cliff Bowes
Cliff vies for Virginia's affections with Eddie, but ultimately she chooses Cliff to be her groom. The newlyweds move in to their new home, but the spurned rival makes a shambles out of the house in retaliation.

CHRISTMAS SEALS FILM (1925)
Running Time: 3 mins


COOK, PAPA, COOK (1928)
Running Time: 9 mins Black and White
Starring: Henry Murdock
A married couple with a toddler bicker about waking up in the morning and who will make breakfast.

Half a Hero (1929)

Starring: Kidland Komedy with Billy Barty

HELTER SKELTER (1929)
Running Time: 20 mins Black and White
Starring: Malcolm "Big Boy" Sebastian
Big Boy's mother takes in washing to make ends meet. An irate customer demands money for damaged clothing, but Mother has no money to give her. Big Boy decides to sell his beloved dog and sets out to find someone to buy him. A few different slapstick adventures follow, culminating in Big Boy and Mutt making a mess of a rich family's home. In the scuffle the boy and the dog are separated, and Big Boy returns home in tears. His mother consoles him, and the door swings open, revealing Mutt.

Hot Luck (1928)
Running Time: 20 mins Black and White
Starring: Malcolm Sebastian, Lorraine Rivero, Billy Sullivan
Big Boy's father takes his son and new dog to his firehouse. His chief, however, has just posted a notice that children and pets are forbidden, so this decent but episodic Jack White comedy turns into a series of narrow escapes from authority and a flea circus.

HOW JIMMY WON THE GAME (1928)
Running Time: 14 mins
Starring: Blasting Cap Safety

LOOSE CHANGE (1928)
Running Time: 11 mins Black and White
Starring: Jack Duffy
A young woman's plan to trick an old rich Scot out of his money backfires.

Love's Young Scream (1928)
Running Time: 20 mins Black and White
Starring: Anne Cornwall, Jimmie Harrison
Young lovers pursued by her father -- and then a series of sight gags based on the mayhem of their auto ride.

MECHANICAL DOLL (1922)
Running Time: 7 mins Black and White
Starring: Koko the Clown
Koko the Clown escapes from the animation studio to have adventures in the real world. Both fun and heartbreak await him.

Meet Father (1924)
Running Time: 10 mins Black and White
Starring: Billy West, Glen Cavender, Pete the Dog
Bess True's father wants her to marry a real man, but Bess prefers Bobby Ray, who must fight boxer Glen Cavender in this standard but funny short comedy.It's a common enough type of story for short comedy in this era, but Ray, who had become a screen comic in 1915 as "Alkilai Ike, Jr." and who would later become a second unit director, is more than up to the challenge. While fans of silent comedy will recognize a lot of gags and locales that many other comedies used (I must have seen a hundred comedies in which some one gets tossed over that cliff by the ocean), Bobby Ray's mild but game character and Cavender's tough handle the gags very well. In addition, fans will be pleased to see Pete the Pup in an early role.

Morning, Judge (1926)
Running Time: 9 mins Black and White
Starring: Peggy Shaw, Flora Finch
When Flora Finch has the leg show that Peggy Shaw is appearing in closed, her son invites the entire chorus home for a party. When his mother, a burglar and a fire appears, chaos ensues in this one-reel comedy.

No Vacancies (1923)

Starring: Jay Belasco, Charlotte Merriam, Billy Armstrong

Nonsense (1920)
Running Time: 22 mins Black and White
Starring: Sid Smith and Jimmie Adams
Marvel Rea will inherit a lot of money if she has a husband by the time she is eighteen, so Frank Coleman kidnaps her before she can get married and so she can sing in his saloon.

PAPA’S BOY (1927)
Running Time: 16 mins Black and White
Starring: Lloyd Hamilton, Glen Cavender, Al Thompson
Butterfly-collector Hamilton is put to the test to prove his virility on an overnight camping trip.

Service a la Bunk (1921)

Starring: Bobby Ray / TuSun comedy

SHERLOCK’S HOME (1924)
Running Time: 21 mins Black and White
Starring: Alberta Vaughn, Gertrude Short, Edward Hearn
Gladys falls for a prizefighter who has invited his entire hometown to watch his fight in New York City. However, he gets crazy jealous when he sees Gladys at the fight sitting next to Jimmy. After the bout is over, he sets out for the hotel to teach Jimmy a lesson.

SHOOT STRAIGHT (1923)
Running Time: 10 mins Black and White
Starring: Paul Parrott
An incompetent hunter experiences a series of misadventures while out in the wilderness.

THE LITTLE PEST (1927)
Running Time: 10 mins Black and White
Starring: Neely Edwards, Consuelo Dawn, Billy Ken
"The Little Pest" is an enjoyable little silent comedy starring Neely Edwards. In many ways, it's like a Charley Chase short--and Neely looks a bit like him. The film begins with a newlywed couple getting a visit from her obnoxious family. They ask if they can leave their little boy with them for a while and they agree--not knowing that the child is a pest. Throughout the rest of the day, the boy destroys everything, is very rude and blames it all on his new uncle.

THE MISFIT (1924)
Running Time: 12 mins Black and White
Starring: Clyde Cook, Blanche Payson, Joe Roberts
A timid man goes to extreme lengths to get away from his domineering wife.

The Ninety And Nine (1922)
Running Time: 10 mins Black and White
Starring: Warner Baxter and Colleen Moore
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.

The Wages of Tin (1925)
Running Time: 10 mins Black and White
Starring: Glenn Tryon, Blanche Mehaffey, Billy Engle
Glen Tryon is learning to drive. He rents a car from Noah Young, gets thirty seconds of instruction from George Rowe and takes girlfriend Blanche Mehaffey for a spin in this fine Roach comedy.Tryon was the latest in a series of normal-looking comedians for Roach that had started with Harold Lloyd's "Glass" character. While he was a capable performer and Roach's staff knew how to make a comedy with almost anyone, there was something apparently missing, so Tryon eventually moved on to Universal and a long and successful career largely behind the camera.

THE WATER PLUG (1920)
Running Time: 15 mins Black and White
Starring: Billy Franey, S.D. Wilcox
Billy is on the bum. He sees a copper writing a ticket to a driver parked in front of a fire hydrant. The driver slips the cop some money to tear up the ticket. Billy acquires a fake fire plug and a policeman's badge, and sets out to make some money.

The Whirlwind (1922)
Black and White
Starring: Joe Rock
Traveling salesman Joe Rock blows into town and is offered Lilian Biron as his wife if he can make the wind stop blowing.

Tides of Passion (1925)
Running Time: 70 mins Black and White
Starring: Mae Marsh
Mae Marsh stars in this film based on the popular novel "In the Garden of Charity" by the Canadian writer Basil King. Produced by Vitagraph, it was the final American silent film for Marsh.What survives of the original 70-minute film is a 21-minute abridgment that was released in 1930 as "The Sea Repays." The condensed version is a little hard to follow, but Marsh is married to Paul (Ben Hendricks, Jr.) who gets bored and goes off to India with his regiment. We see him there dallying with a married woman. After his discharge he's en route for home but goes overboard and is washed up on an island where a woman (Laska Winter)takes him in. After a while he gets bored and decides to go home to Marsh. She takes him to Hunger Island and is supposed to tell people where they can pick him up ... but she does not.She goes back to Hunger Island (a barren rock) after a few days and rescues Paul (apparently suffering from starvation and exposure) and takes him to Holby where Marsh comes calling in time for Paul to ask for forgiveness. Winter also needs forgiveness because she's pregnant.Story shifts to the women. Marsh bonds with the baby while Winter suffers guilt and shame and eventually confronts Marsh about the baby before she heads to the sea with suicide in mind. Marsh pursues her.The final sequence is harrowing and very well done ... no stunt doubles.Mae Marsh and Laska Winter are very good in this stark little drama. Hendricks is stuck with a rather unappealing character. Earl Schenck plays the gallant cousin.

Walter's Paying Policy (1926)
Running Time: 22 mins Black and White
Starring: George Foley, Walter Forde, Pauline Peters
An insurance salesman pretends to steal a collector's vase and catches a burglar.

WEDDING SLIPS (1928)
Running Time: 9 mins Black and White
Starring: Monte Collins
A young pair of newlyweds crash into a gypsy camp, where strange encounters with love and the law await them.

Whose Baby? (1929)
Running Time: 10 mins Black and White
Starring: Arthur Lake, Gertrude Messinger, Glen Cavender
In this one, an episode in the Universal Studios series called "Horace in Hollywood", Lake dates up Gertrude Messinger. While waiting for her outside a movie theater, he is handed a baby by its mother with a request to mind it while she goes offscreen. Naturally, Gertrude thinks the baby is Lake's. So does Glen Cavender, who seems to be in about forty percent of all short comedies in this period, as a beat cop.

WHY WILD MEN GO WILD (1920)
Running Time: 12 mins Black and White
Starring: Bobby Vernon, James Harrison, Vera Steadman
James Harrison takes Bobby Vernon home to meet his sister, Vera Steadman. Bobby is on his best behavior, but Vera prefers wild men, so when a wild man is reported stealing chickens, James disguises himself as the thief and has Bobby drive him off