D.W. Griffith

A documentary of Hollywood's first great Latin Lover, the contradictions in his personal life, and his premature death.

Calumny is one of the most despicable crimes against our neighbor, and while the wife in this story acted conventionally, she nevertheless maligned the other woman simply because of her profession, an actress. While out on a shopping tour, the wife and her husband enter a store, leaving their little child in the auto in the care of the chauffeur. This gentleman pays but scant attention to the child, so the little one wanders off and strolls into the stage door of a theater during the matinee. The parents upon their return to the auto discover the child's absence and trace him to the theater stage, where they find him in the arms of one of the show girls. The mother matches the child from the girl's arms, scornfully exclaiming, "How dare you contaminate my child with your touch?" For this remark, together with the derisive laughter it occasions, the girl vows to be avenged.

A husband finishes packing a suitcase, and then says good-bye to his wife. As soon as he is gone, the wife has her maid help her to dress for a costume ball...

At the Crossroads of Life is a typically Victorian-style melodrama in which a girl's wishes to be an actress are condemned by her stern father, a man of the cloth who has no time for those in the acting profession.

A thug accosts a girl as she leaves her workplace but a man rescues her. The thug vows revenge and, with the help of two friends, attacks the girl and her rescuer again as they're going for a walk. This time they succeed in kidnapping the rescuer. The girl runs home and gets help from several neighbors. They track the ruffians down to a cabin in the mountains where the gang has trapped their victim and set the cabin on fire.

At a political club, the members debate whose bust will replace that of Theodore Roosevelt. Unable to agree, each goes to a sculptor's studio and bribes him to sculpt a bust of the individual favorite. Instead, the sculptor spends their fees on a dinner with his model during which he becomes so inebriated that he is taken to jail. There he has a nightmare, wherein three busts are created and animated from clay (through stop-motion photography) in the likenesses of Democrat William Jennings Bryan and Republicans Charles W. Fairbanks and William Howard Taft. Finally an animated bust of Roosevelt appears.

This one-reeler has been regarded as a classic example of a Griffith thriller. It engages with the Chinese White slave traffic from the perspective of a female detective, played by Marion Leonard, whose assignment is to expose and break the traffic ring. A fragment is widely available.

A woman who is filled with romantic ideas is making no secret of her eagerness to find a husband. Her father decides to help her by pressuring and threatening an eligible bachelor, who reluctantly allows wedding plans to be made.

Believed to be the first film to feature cannibals.

A father arrives home, greets his wife and daughter, and then goes inside with his wife. Though they are only inside for a brief time, their daughter wanders off, attracted by the music from a pair of gypsies performing in the street. When the gypsies move on, they take the young girl with her. As soon as the parents realize that their daughter is gone, they begin a frantic search, assisted by the family's loyal dog.

At the Italian boarding house the male boarders were all smitten with the charms of Minnie, the landlady's pretty daughter, but she was of a poetic turn of mind and her soul soared above plebeianism and her aspirations were romantic. Most persistent among her suitors was Grigo, a coarse Sicilian, whose advances were odiously repulsive. The arrival at the boarding house from the old country of Giuseppe Cassella, the violinist, filled the void in her yearning heart. Romantic, poetic and a talented musician, Giuseppe was indeed a desirable husband for Minnie.

A woodsman leaves a hut followed by a woman with their baby. Nearby some men chop down a tree. The baby is left outside the hut, but an eagle flies away with it.

After receiving a scolding for falling asleep on the job, Cupid is sent out in search of potential lovers to unite. While flying over a city, he finds a ballroom dance and identifies a likely couple. He is successful in getting them to meet, but many obstacles still stand in the way of Cupid achieving his goal for them.

A collection of 2 minute documentaries that tell not only the historical facts of WW1, but also the stories of those most involved and others greatly affected by the day to day events. The deadly serious to more light-hearted, this has it all compiled from the vast resources of the Imperial War Museum.

Mack Sennett appears as a soldier in this film produced by the Biograph Company.

Mack Sennett appears as a charity worker in this film produced by the Biograph Company.

A poorly compensated bank clerk is, we may say, to that trying position of "Tantalus" in sight of tons of money but not a dollar of his own. This became more torturing as time went on, until at last, when the bank was arranging to ship a large quantity of cash to the West to relieve the recent money stringency, he made up his mind to heed the solicitude of that specter which had haunted him. Listening to the instructions given to the bank's messenger as to the shipment of the funds, he hustles off to a gang of crooks in whose company he had fallen.

Mack Sennett appears as a policeman and waiter in this film produced by the Biograph Company.

Mack Sennett appears in this film produced by the Biograph Company.

Had the poor melancholy Dane, Hamlet, lived in this, the twentieth century, he would never have given voice to the remark, "Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew!" No indeed! He would have procured some of the mysterious fluid compounded by an erudite scientist by which things animate and inanimate were rendered non est, for ten minutes at least, by simply spraying them with it. In an atomizer, he sends a quantity, accompanied by a letter, to his brother. In the hope of his putting it on the market. The brother regards it as a joke, and, while toying with the atomizer, accidentally sprays himself. Presto! he is gone, to the amazement of the messenger boy who has carried the package thither. The boy reads the letter, and at once sees the amount of fun he can get out of it, so he nips it.

Mack Sennett appears as a man in a bar in this film produced by the Biograph Company.

Pretty Miss Chrysanthemum has but little to say as to the disposal of her heart, at least, such is the custom in Japan. Her parents attend to that for her. However, pretty little O Yama Sum had a will of her own, and casting tradition to the winds, insisted upon making her own choice. The Grand Daimio has long loved the pretty O Yama and presents himself before her mother in quest of her hand. His offer is scorned by O Yama, for she loves another, a low-born but worthy warrior.

Mack Sennett appears as a man in the bar in this film produced by the Biograph Company.

Mary Pickford's name remains inseparable from the legend of American cinema. She invented the star system at the beginning of the 20th century, and was the biggest star ever known, not just in Hollywood, but worldwide, at a time when actors didn't even have their names on movie posters. She was more than a pioneer, she was a jack-of-all-trades: world-famous star, producer and formidable businesswoman, screenwriter and director in the shadows, studio boss, Mary Pickford alone embodied the entire legend of cinema and the advent of women in that particular era.

This documentary traces the life and work of the legendary "America's Sweetheart" Mary Pickford, silent film star, movie pioneer and keen businesswoman. Pickford's life also parallels an even larger story, telling of the birth of the cinema itself.

A dialogue between director D. W. Griffith and actor Walter Huston on the subject of Griffith controversial 1915 film "Birth Of A Nation" and it's theatrical re-release in 1931.

What is more miserable than love-blighted life? For the heart that truly loves can never forget. Such is the sad fate of the hero of this Biograph story.

Two students at college were friends until a girl appeared and by the workings of fate was beloved by both. The girl has given her heart to one of the classmates, unknown to the other. The youth confesses his love, and is plunged into despair when told that her heart is another's. Coldly the classmates part, when the next day they start on their divergent paths of life. Years later, they meet again and while the trio enjoy a pleasant chat, a message calls the husband away, leaving his wife to entertain. The chum takes advantage of his absence to renew his protestations of love, which are spurned by the wife, who attempts to avoid him. He follows, whereupon the wife sends him reeling down the stairs, just as the husband reenters. The woman's denunciation of the friend brings about a terrific combat.

A beautiful singer and a battling priest try to reform a Barbary Coast saloon owner in the days before the great earthquake and subsequent fires in 1906.

Intimate views of the movie stars of the Silent Era, at work and play; featuring Sessue Hayakawa, Lillian Gish and others.

During the American Revolution, a young soldier carrying a crucial message to General Washington is spotted and pursued by a group of enemy soldiers. He takes refuge with a civilian family, but is soon detected. The family and their neighbors must then make plans to see that the important message gets through after all.

Billy witnesses two tramps accidentally kill someone during a robbery. The tramps lock him up and decide that he must be killed, too.

Crime drama involving an Irish couple immigrating to America

With the family of Mr. Phlipp there is employed that wrecker of domestic serenity, a pretty French maid, whose trim figure and cherry lips are simply irresistible. This is all very fine for Phlipp, who is wont to bask in the radiance of her smiles and to sip the honey from her rose-leaved lips. But, alas! his bliss is short-lived, for, the perspicacious Mrs. Phlipp grows suspicious and surprises the erring couple in an osculatory diversion. The meretricious maiden is put to right, and the sinful Phlipp is assailed with most vociferous vituperative verbosity.

Seamen Enoch Arden returns home after a long absence marooned on a desert island. At home he finds his wife married to another, and though he loves her, he cannot bear to disrupt her current happiness.

The careers of D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and Charlie Chaplin are chronicled culminating in the formation of United Artists and 1919.

A look at the parallel lives of Charlie Chaplin and Adolf Hitler and how they crossed with the creation of the film “The Great Dictator,” released in 1940.

Hulda is a maiden fair to look upon. Her artless rustic simplicity, rivaling Hebe's gorgeous radiance, phlogisticates the susceptible hearts of the village swains. But alas, Hulda was a fickle maid, and seemed to have as many phases as the moon, with a smile for all and a frown for none. Her capriciousness was the cause of much unrest, both for herself and her lovers, for when her parents had departed for a visit, leaving her in charge of the kitchen, she received most effusively Jocular Jake, the village cut-up, only to hide him above stairs at the entrance of Previous-Hearted Pat, the hostler, who in turn is hidden in the Dutch oven at the approach of Handy Hank, the chore boy.

Before the G, PG and R ratings system there was the Production Code, and before that there was, well, nothing. This eye-opening documentary examines the rampant sexuality of early Hollywood through movie clips and reminiscences by stars of the era. Gloria Swanson, Mary Pickford, Marlene Dietrich and others relate tales of the artistic freedom that led to the draconian Production Code, which governed content from 1934 to 1968. Diane Lane narrates.

A wealthy old alchemist and inventor has just perfected a motion picture camera with which he hopes to revolutionize the art of animated photography, and our story opens with the old man in his library studying out the plans of his invention. A telegram calls him hurriedly away. He replaces the papers in his safe, but, in his haste, neglects to lock it, which oversight is pardonable, as his wife and daughter are in the room at the time. The daughter's hand is sought in marriage by a worthy young man, whose attentions are looked upon with favor by herself and her parents. But he has a rival in the person of a contemptible villain, whose motives are purely mercenary, reasoning that this new invention will greatly enhance the father's already ample wealth.

A haughty politician, on seeing a satirical cartoon in a newspaper, rushes to the paper's offices to shoot the cartoonist. On discovering the cartoonist is a pretty woman, he falls instantly in love and wastes no time in trying to woo her.

A young couple are enjoying a romantic interlude in the young woman's home, when her father discovers them and angrily chases the young man out of the house. They thus decide to elope, and they make plans accordingly. But as they are leaving, a thief discovers their plans, and he decides to turn the situation to his own advantage.

Two noblemen fight over a lady.

Sisters guarding their house from a burglar set upon stealing their daddy's money.

TV's most-watched history series brings to life the compelling stories from our past that inform our understanding of the world today.