Viola Dana

Gold-digger Molly marries the heir to a fortune, but things go badly when he is disinherited and starts working as a ditch digger.

June, a young orphan, is befriended by Perry Bascom when he shares his lunch with her on the road to Rising Sun. They soon fall in love and marry, only to find out that a woman in Perry's past has come to town to make trouble. Teaming up with the local political bully, the schemers set out to make Perry's life miserable, but June sticks by her husband to the end.

A love triangle set against the turn-of-the-century gold rush.

Now hear this. The studio that gave the cinema its voice offered 1929 audiences a chance to see and hear multiple silent-screen favorites for the first time in a gaudy, grandiose music-comedy-novelty revue that also included Talkie stars, Broadway luminaries and of course, Rin-Tin-Tin. Frank Fay hosts a jamboree that, among its 70+ stars, features bicyclers, boxing champ Georges Carpentier, chorines in terpsichore kickery, sister acts, Myrna Loy in two-strip Technicolor as an exotic Far East beauty, John Barrymore in a Shakespearean soliloquy (adding an on-screen voice to his legendary profile for the first time) and Winnie Lightner famously warbling the joys of Singing in the Bathtub. Watch, rinse, repeat!

Jack De Quincy, an American graduate of Oxford, is still considered a wastrel playboy by his father, owner of a giant lumber company in the American northwest. To prove he is a man his father sends him there to take charge of a large lumber camp, filled with brawny he-men who spend their time drinking, gambling and brawling when not cutting timber. Once there, Jack establishes himself by winning a fight against "Dum-Dum" Pete, the toughest man in those parts. Along the way he sees to it that a needed operation is performed on the camp's mascot, a crippled young boy, and saves his sweetheart, Marie O'Nei, that daughter of a rival lumber company, from drowning in the river when the spring thaw causes an ice-break flood.

An amateur detective's automobile is stolen by a young woman who is determined to elope, leading to a complicated chase involving several vehicles.

An illegitimate child of the slums comes to faith. Later, she chooses to labor in a canning factory in order to investigate its poor conditions, not realizing she has a significant connection to the cold-hearted factory owner.

Therese Duverne (Viola Dana) is bored with her even-tempered husband, Edmond (Adolphe Menjou). Isabelle Fevre (Gale Henry) suggests that Edmond go to the bicycle races and stay out all night. Then she takes Therese there and introduces her to manly Petit Mathieu, one of the racers (Maurice B. Flynn). Since he has just quarreled with his sweetheart, Lea (Jetta Goudal), he is glad to have Therese's attention and offers to run away with her after he wins the six-day race. Lea, meanwhile, is spending her time with Edmond. Therese eventually decides she doesn't care for brutes like Mathieu, and Edmond gains a temper and wins his wife back. Lea and Mathieu are reunited, while Isabelle goes back to helping her own alcoholic sweetheart, Igor (Raymond Griffith), break into the movies.

Feodor Turov, chief of the Russian Czar's secret police, orders his Cossacks to attack a village he believes to be infested with rebels. The Cossacks attack the village and massacre almost everyone, and the young Katerina is whipped to death. Before escaping to England, her sister Darya swears to avenge her sister's death. Years later--now one of the world's most famous prima ballerinas--she returns to Russia. Turov falls in love with her and manages to secure a meeting. She coyly asks him to take her to see a prison first. As it turns out, what he has planned for her is nothing compared to what she has planned for him.

The story of two young sisters, one a somewhat demure musician who is in love with a scoundrel who's no good for her, and the other a wild, free spirit who is the object of a shy young carpenter's affections.

Jennie, a coquettish housemaid, flirts with the grocer's delivery boy and thereby incites the jealousy of her sweetheart, Frank, the butler. Frank goes to his station in the hall and, in his anger, tells the marble statue that is a part of the furnishings of the handsome home, that his sweetheart is as cold as the stone of which it is made. He quiets down, and as he is not very busy, soon becomes drowsy, and dreams that the statue comes to life and goes with him to a ball. While they are walking along the street, a policeman meets them and questions Frank. He gets frightened, they run and as they rush back into the hall, the statue falls and breaks into a thousand pieces. His sweetheart comes down the steps and wakes him up and tells him to answer the bell. Frank's surprise at seeing the statue whole is plainly shown and his delight that is has all been a dream causes him to make up with his sweetheart.

Crinoline and Romance

Nursery Favourites is a marvel. Presented as a pre-recorded number (singers miming to a commercial record). One of the most fascinating film-sound documents of all times.

The young Ruth Travers, left an orphan after the death of her father financially ruined by Mortimer Reynolds, is welcomed at home by Jimmy Carter, a young millionaire who becomes her guardian. Ruth's winsome qualities gradually win Jimmy's heart. Meanwhile at a Charity Ball, Ruth meets Mr. Reynolds, who is contriving to ruin her virtue.

Angela comes to Hollywood with only two things: Her dream to become a movie star, and Grandpa. She leaves an Aunt, a brother, Grandma, and her longtime boyfriend back in Centerville. Despite seeing major movie stars around every corner, and knocking on every casting office door in town, at the end of her first day she is still unemployed. To her horror, when she arrives back at their hotel, she finds that Grandpa has been cast in a movie by William DeMille and quickly becomes a star during the ensuing weeks. Her family, worried that Angela and Grandpa are getting into trouble, come to Hollywood to drag them back home. In short order Aunt, Grandma, brother, boyfriend and even the parrot become superstars, but Angela is still unemployed...

Thrifty orphan Norah MacPherson meets wealthy young James Patterson, who gets her a job as a chorus girl. They fall in love. To put up a good front, she spends all her money on clothes. Patterson doubts her when he sees her wearing a string of fake pearls; he then finds that she hasn't been unfaithful, and they are reconciled.

The Social Code

Gladiola

Another of a successful string of Metro features directed by the vastly underrated John H. Collins, Riders of the Night was set in Kentucky hill country. Collins' wifeViola Dana stars as Sally Castleton, a country girl in love with a brooding and idealistic aristocrat. When her sweetheart joins a night-riding vigilante organization, Sally is temporarily dismayed but resolves to hide the man from the authorities.

Paul Granville becomes a famous painter for his portraits of great women as modeled by the beautiful Joline Hofer. When one of Paul's paintings appears to result in a miracle, Joline's life is changed forever. She leaves her previous life to live one of service and piety, a decision that ultimately saves Paul's life.

Based on the 1922 play Der Legionër by Lajos Biró.

After Ned Hamilton is rejected by his girlfriend, he travels to Japan where he hears an old legend about the Willow Tree Princess, who kills herself so that her lover will go off to battle. When he makes a purchase from Tomotada, an image maker, he meets his pretty daughter O-Riu, and they recreate the events of the legend.

Miser Ebenezer Scrooge is awakened on Christmas Eve by spirits who reveal to him his own miserable existence, what opportunities he wasted in his youth, his current cruelties, and the dire fate that awaits him if he does not change his ways. Scrooge is faced with his own story of growing bitterness and meanness, and must decide what his own future will hold: death or redemption.

Vi Marchmont (Viola Dana) is a spoiled rich girl who has thirteen lovers. Her Aunt Letitia (Kate Lester) wants her to halt her flirtatious ways and has picked Clyde Van Ness (Theodore Von Eltz) as the right one out of the bunch -- not that Vi agrees. Aunt Letitia sends her off to the country, along with Van Ness and the gardener, Richard Hardy (Jack Mulhall). Vi winds up falling for the gardener, much to her aunt's horror, and in spite of the class differences, he becomes her fourteenth lover.

Seeing's Believing

Katie O'Doone is left a worthless, run-down estate and a thoroughbred race horse. She mortgages the property in order to get the money needed to enter her horse in the Derby. Dennis Reilly, a wealthy sportsman, also has a horse in the race and his jockey accidentally runs Reilly's horse into Kate's horse, causing her horse to lose. She swears vengeance on O'Reilly. She is forced to go to work for a crooked bookie, Jake Trumbull, and a crooked competitor of Reilly's,Tod Cuyler, who plan on switching a dead-ringer horse for Reilly's favored-to-win horse, and clean up betting against Reilly's horse.

Promised in marriage to wealthy Lot Gordon , Scottish lassie Madelon MacTavish prefers Lot's poor relation Burr Gordon. The wisdom of her choice is proven later on, when a vengeful Lot tries to rape the girl.

Her Fatal Millions

After she inherits a fortune, Ann Clemance travels to Paris to indulge herself in frivolity. She meets up with an old friend, writer Adrian Torrens, who disparages her lifestyle. Ann sees him befriend an Apache dancer and she believes he finds women in need of salvation more appealing.

June Madness

The story is a variation on the Abie's Irish Rose theme, detailing the marriage between an Irish Catholic and a Jew.

Naughty Nanette

One Splendid Hour

Tomboy Nita, a vegetable seller in a small Californian town, believes herself to be the daughter of poor ranch workers, but she is actually the daughter of Clara Hawkins, a wealthy neighbour who was stolen at birth and presumed dead. (NFA Catalogue)

Opportunity

Puppets of Fate

Satan Junior

When, on a prank, shimmy dancer Marcia Meadows visits bookworm Horace Tarbox in his Yale dormitory, Horace falls madly in love and follows her to New York where he and Marcia marry. Denounced by his wealthy father, Horace attempts to support Marcia through his writing, but all his manuscripts are rejected, and he is fired from every job.

Blind Ambrose North is tormented by the suspicion that his wife Constance committed suicide when their crippled daughter Barbara was only two, because she did not love him. Before her death, Constance wrote Barbara a letter to be opened on the girl's twenty-first birthday, but when Barbara opens it and learns that her mother killed herself to escape a doomed love affair with Lawrence Austin, she invents a different story for Ambrose, knowing that the truth would hurt him too deeply.

A wannabe film star journeys to Hollywood, but soon finds his dreams do not pan out.

A Weaver of Dreams is a lost silent film directed by Edison's John H. Collins

The Butterworth family attorney Gaspar Le Sage, and a suitor for the hand of Eleanor Butterworth, persuades a beautiful adventuress, Annabelle Wu, to help him steal the official plans for the coastal defense of California from Eleanor's brother, Lieutenant Butterworth.

Songwriter Mack Gordon introduces flagpole sitter Shipwreck Kelly, who hoists some girls aloft with him and shows them sights around Hollywood.

Cohen's Luck

Threads of Fate

The story of a man who was robbed of his greatest love and the South Seas wildflower who found it for him, in the land of pawn trees where men of all nations gather; some seeking vengeance and some forgiveness.

Twin sisters, one good and honest and sweet, and the other given to totin' pistols and pulling robberies, keep confusing a detective about which one he his chasing for what, since he has different reasons for chasing both.

Viola Dana plays Eleanor, a minister's daughter who comes to New York to visit her older sister, a successful businesswoman. Eleanor manages to get a job as a nurse in a major metropolitan hospital. One night, she is called upon to look after a drunken tourist, who turns out to be her hometown sweetheart Roger (Pat O'Malley).

Ben Lyon and Viola Dana co-star in this heavy society drama

Part of a 7-part series exploring all aspects of Hollywood.

Glass Houses is a 1922 film.

In San Francisco, California, Rosa Moreland of the Secret Service is unable to obtain evidence against suspected opium smuggler George Sala. She then advises Detective Flint of her plan to develop a relationship with John King, an impoverished, disabled ex-soldier who Rosa met in George's office. After claiming to have lost her home in a fire, Rosa is invited to stay in John's modest flat. He receives money from a mysterious source, enabling them to afford a more expensive apartment, and they soon fall in love. Although Rosa secretly witnesses John receiving a package from George, she tells the skeptical Flint that her lover is above suspicion. John agrees to end his association with George if Rosa will marry him, and, realizing that a wife cannot legally testify against her husband, she agrees.

Viola Dana stars as the child of a widower who marries again, much to her dismay. Despite all attempts by the adults, the child refuses to accept her new step-mother

When young Ruth Ambrose ( Viola Dana ) arrives in Action, Maine, she rents a room above the furniture store of Israel Hubbard. After he leaves her in charge of the shop, her vivacious charm advances sales, producing a profitable business and Ruth soon begins a romantic relationship with the storekeeper's nephew, Allan ( Raymond McKee ).

Sheer beauty is only way to describe these gorgeous creatures!

The father of a working class family is having trouble finding a job, because the local textile mill is hiring only inexpensive child labor. Reluctantly, he allows his oldest daughter to work in the mill. Meanwhile, in New York, the wealthy businessman Hanscomb is being urged to speak out against child labor, but he declines to do so. Then, while Mrs. Hanscomb and her daughter are traveling, the young girl accidentally wanders away, gets lost, and is taken in by the working class family. To help them, she takes a job in the mill. While this is taking place, Hanscomb has initiated a search for the daughter even as he goes about building up his financial empire.

Struggling young doctor in a rural community, Dr. Lawrence Tibbits, cures Norma, a circus elephant, when she is injured in a fire. The circus moves on, but Norma, who has become quite attached to the young doctor, keeps coming back, trampling everything in her way.

After young Ruth Bowman's mother dies, the child is raised by Agatha Pixley, and in time, the girl falls in love with Agatha's son, Eric. While Eric is at sea with Captain Scudder on a boat owned by Jim and Hiram Hawley, a jealous villager spreads the tale that Ruth is illegitimate, and the townspeople inevitably snub her. Jim Hiram sets his boat on fire after its arrival in port so that he can collect insurance money, and Ruth, believing that Eric is on board, tries to rescue him. When Ruth and Eric escape safely, Captain Scudder reveals that he, Ruth's long-lost father, was legally married to her mother, which re-establishes Ruth's good name and enables her to marry Eric. - From IMDB

Salvation Jane

Home Stuff

Documentary on the various mysteries in Hollywood.

A 1980 documentary series exploring the establishment and development of the Hollywood studios and its impact on 1920s culture.

A series about the life, career and works of the movie comedy genius.