Tom Powers

Cinema a century ago was a new, exciting and highly democratic form of entertainment. Picture houses nationwide offered a sociable, lively environment in which to relax and escape from the daily grind. With feature films still rare, the programme was an entertaining, ever-changing roster of short items with live musical accompaniment. 100 years on, this special compilation from the BFI National Archive recreates the glorious miscellany of comedies, dramas, travelogues and newsreels which would have constituted a typical night out in 1914. Our selection includes a comic short about a face-pulling competition, a sensational episode of The Perils of Pauline, scenes of Allied troops celebrating Christmas at the Front, and an early sighting of one of cinema’s greatest icons.

Marc Hill is the attorney for Emmet Devrey, a real estate developer with a past, who is being blackmailed by his former partner Sam Baggett. When Sam's unfaithful wife Marge cooks up a scheme with her used car salesman lover Jeff Calder to bilk both Devrey and her alcoholic husband, Sam is killed and Devrey is accused of the crime. Mark is called to prove his employers innocence.

Story follows the rise and subsequent fall of the notorious head of a New York crime family, who decides to testify against his pals in order to avoid being killed by his fellow cohorts.

When his ward seeks protection with rival cattleman John Stewart, embittered, jealous rancher Wick Campbell hires ten outlaws to help him seize power in the territory.

An American Rancher takes a small herd of Brahma bulls to Brazil where he has sold them for a small fortune. There, he finds himself in the middle of a range war......and in love. His concern, who are really his friends and who are his enemies

A scientist takes the brain of dead man and revives it via electrodes as it lays suspended in a tank of liquid. Soon, the brain grows to possess enormous psychic powers and inflicts its personality upon the doctor who saved it, creating a "Jekyll and Hyde" paradigm.

Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer in his first film adventure. Originally screened in 3D.

An outlaw woman helps one Arizona convict stop another with a Gatling gun.

Professional killer Bus Crow is hired by cattlemen to eliminate squatters. When Marshal Sam Rochelle is sent to investigate, saloon owner Hallie has to be a reluctant witness.

A posse's pursuit of bank robbers ends with loot missing and a sheriff (Broderick Crawford) wounded.

The assassination of the would be ruler of Rome at the hands of Brutus and company has tragic consequences for the idealist and the republic.

Mike Martin becomes a deputy marshal and takes on a gang of cattle rustlers.

Joseph Cotten plays an assistant bank manager who steals $1,000,000 from the safe late on a Friday and then plans to flee to Brazil over the weekend.

Brothers Dan and Neil Hammond return to Texas after the Civil War. Ambitious Dan turns to rustling and then shady land deals to build an empire. Being held for a murder, he is rescued from a lynch mob by Neil, who is now the Marshal, but there is eventually a falling out between the brothers, good triumphing over evil.

An unsophisticated country girl accidentally joins the army.

Deaf boxer Paul Callan captures the interest of gold-digging blonde Sonya Bartow and retired fight manager 'Pop' Richardson. For a time, Sonya has the upper hand with Paul, but ultimately a rival appears in the shape of upper-crust reporter Ann Hollis. With a 3-way fight under way for influence over Paul, he takes matters into his own hands, but learns that getting what he wanted isn't necessarily a happy ending.

Story of a girl who witnesses murder of notorious international jewel thief. Afraid that the gang will attack her, she flees to Paris.

Jim Vesser and his team of railroading men try to build a rail line through a mountain pass, while a group of less scrupulous construction workers sabotages the entire operation in the hopes that they can get their tracks laid first and get the money from the railroad.

A Cuban businessman's (Nestor Paiva) daughter (Estelita) elopes with a professor (Robert Clarke) instead of marrying a banker's son.

Four strangers board a plane and become fast friends, but a catastrophic crash leaves only one survivor. He then sets off on a journey to discover who these people were, but ultimately discovers the devastating truth about himself.

In a racially mixed American town, a five-year-old black girl falls unnoticed into a hidden, forgotten well on her way to school. Having nothing better to go on, the police follow up a report that the child was seen with a white stranger, and rumors run wild. Before hapless, innocent Claude Packard is even found, popular hysteria has him tried and convicted. But is he guilty?

A detective tries to prevent the assassination of President-elect Abraham Lincoln during a train ride headed for Washington in 1861.

Story of how the Coast Guard trained to help win World War II.

Citizens of Fairview are outraged when they learn children from the "Patch", a squalid migrant camp on the outskirts of town, will soon be attending Fairview's school.

A sportswriter forms a ring triangle with a fight manager's daughter and her Mexican-American boxer.

Postulates the first manned trip to the moon, happening in the (then) near future, and being funded by a consortium of private backers. Assorted difficulties occur and must be overcome in-flight. Attempted to be realistic, with Robert A. Heinlein providing advice.

A mysterious stranger crosses paths with an outlaw bank robber and a greedy rancher.

A vain businessman puts strains on his happy marriage to a rich, beautiful socialite by allowing himself to be seduced by a former girlfriend.

A young man who steals valuable Oriental objects for a lady friend who operates an antique shop gets mixed up in a twisted murder plot.

On Chicago's South Side reporter Ed Ames finds the body of a dead girl. Her address book leads to a host of names of men frightened by her death but claiming never to have known her. Ames comes to know quite a lot, dangerously so.

A cop investigates the shooting of another policeman... that may have been involved in crooked activities.

A California railroad agent hunts two brothers for murder and robbing a payroll express.

Two con men selling phony stock flee to Mexico ahead of the law, where they run into a woman friend from their earlier days, who is now a bullfighter.

An ex-convict on his way to make his fortune in a gold mine in Arizona has his trip interrupted when the residents of a small Mexican village believe him to be a sacred religious figure.

Joe spends a lot of his time at Nick's Pacific Street Saloon. Tom, who credits Joe with once saving his life, stops by regularly to run errands for Joe. Today, Tom notices a woman named Kitty when she comes into Nick's, and he quickly falls in love with her. Meanwhile, a distraught young man repeatedly calls his girlfriend, begging her to marry him. Nick himself muses on all the various persons who come into his bar, some to ask for work and others just to pass the time.

When two US cavalrymen transporting a gold shipment get killed, US Army Intelligence investigator John Haven goes undercover to a mining and logging town to find the killers.

A newspaper reporter and the daughter of an immigrant maintenance man help expose political corruption in New York City.

A wealthy man hires a detective to investigate his wife's mysterious past.

The fourth film in Columbia's "Rusty" series is a lecture against gossiping. A young army veteran comes to town, and Danny and his friends learn that he had spent time in a military stockade for an infraction of a regulation. Danny's friends spread the story all over town. The seriousness of the minor infraction grows with each telling. As a sidebar, Rusty finds a mate and becomes a father.

On trial for murdering his girlfriend, philandering stockbroker Larry Ballentine takes the stand to claim his innocence and describe the actual, but improbable sounding, sequence of events that led to her death.

Danny Mitchell, feeling that he has been misunderstood by his parents, takes his dog, Rusty, and leaves home, camping out near the trailer of veterinary Dr. Francis Xavier Ray. Gas escapes in the trailer during the night, and Rusty rescues the vet before he is overcome.

After leaving her family's farm to study nursing in the city, a young woman finds herself on an unexpected path towards politics.

Notorious shootist and womanizer Quirt Evans' horse collapses as he passes a Quaker family's home. Quirt has been wounded, and the kindly family takes him in to nurse him back to health against the advice of others. The handsome Evans quickly attracts the affections of their beautiful daughter, Penelope. He develops an affection for the family and their faith, but his troubled past follows him.

In 1834, Charles Stewart (Alan Ladd), the spoiled, dissolute son of a shipping magnate, is shanghaied aboard the Pilgrim, one of his father's own ships. He embarks upon a long, hellish sea voyage under the tyrannical rule of Captain Francis Thompson (Howard Da Silva), assisted by his first mate, Amazeen (William Bendix). One of his crewmates is Richard Henry Dana Jr. (Brian Donlevy).

A mystery grows after a bank robbery car leads investigators to a carnival sideshow.

A boy's tall tale about a gun puts his parents and school principal in jail.

Soon after a veteran's return from war his cheating wife is found dead. He evades police in an attempt to find the real murderer.

The story of Joe Ferrill, whose efforts to raise enough money so that his imprisoned father can live comfortably upon release come to naught when the elder Ferrill dies behind bars. Vowing revenge on Society, Joe aligns himself with a bunch of gangsters. He intends to use his mob connections to get even with auditor John Mitchell, the man whose testimony sent Joe's dad to the Big House. But Joe hasn't counted on falling in love with Mitchell's pretty daughter Chris.

A reporter learns that an executed killer has taken over a scientist's mind.

In this screwball comedy a WW2 US pilot bombs a Japanese aircraft carrier, is assumed to be dead, and then is misquoted in the press as fondly remembering his days back home walking his dog Piggy. Instead of his dog Piggy he is thought to be in love with Peggy, a girl he worked with. The usual farce ensues after he returns home alive and tries to play along with the mistake to save embarrassment for all.

A rich woman and a calculating insurance agent plot to kill her unsuspecting husband after he signs a double indemnity policy. Against a backdrop of distinctly Californian settings, the partners in crime plan the perfect murder to collect the insurance, which pays double if the death is accidental.

Daisy and her husband both go in for a face-pulling contest, but when the big day comes she is unable to attend the competition, and her husband wins instead. When the next opportunity comes around, she is determined to win -- but gets a little over-enthusiastic on the way to the contest and finds herself in trouble! She is most ungrateful for her rescue; fate, however, catches up with her that night…

Although not the first feature-length animated film, as is sometimes thought, it was the first cartoon to feature a character with an appealing personality. The appearance of a true character distinguished it from earlier animated "trick films", such as those of Blackton and Cohl, and makes it the predecessor to later popular cartoons such as those by Walt Disney. The film was also the first to be created using keyframe animation.

Seeing Cutey play the part of a maid of all work at a college play, Alys Trevor seeks an introduction to him and they soon become good friends. She takes him with her to present him to her mother, whom she finds talking to a stranger, Lord Goodbluff. Mama does not seem very pleased to meet Cutey. Later Cutey calls at the Trevor house to see Alys and meets Goodbluff there, who soon quarrels with him. Mrs. Trevor, entering in the midst of the dispute, requests Cutey to leave the house and apologizes to Goodbluff for the young man's behavior. Then she sends a note to Cutey, telling him that her daughter is no longer free to receive his calls. By a strange occurrence, Cutey's suspicions of Goodbluff are aroused and he determines to watch him. Noticing an advertisement in the paper for a maid of all work, inserted by Mrs. Trevor, he obtains the necessary disguise and applies for the position, which he gets.

From his apartment, where he lives a cheerless widower's life, overlooking Washington Park, Alan Dale sees a refined, but poverty-stricken old gentleman on one of the park benches. Calling his butler, he instructs him to go down and tell the old man he would like to see him. When the butler approaches the elderly man the old fellow is somewhat skeptical, but finally consents to go with him. Alan receives his guest cordially and tells him why he has requested him to come and invites him to dinner. During the meal the old man tells his life's story: how he married a young woman, and after the birth of a little daughter, she died. How his daughter had married a young fellow and gone to live in New York, and how he had lost his money. The last news he had received of her was of her death.

A comic one-act film featuring the character Bunny, which takes place in an office.

This domestic comedy depicts a woman who stops her husband's gambling habit by having her cousin stage a fake police raid on the weekly poker game.

Dolly Dillard jumps at the conclusion that George Gordon is playing her false, as he affectionately greets his sister at the train when she comes to pay him a visit. Dolly, who is not acquainted with his sister, sends back her engagement ring. Sad and disconsolate, she saunters to the cliffs overlooking the seashore, trying to forget her imagined wrong. As she is climbing down the side of the rocky prominence, her foot slips and she falls into a narrow crevice. She finds herself helpless with a sprained ankle. Remembering George's returned match-case, she tears a piece of cloth from her skirt; writes with a burnt match a note, telling of her accident. She ties it around her shoe and throws it over the cliff to her collie dog Jean, who carries the missive to George, who at once, after summoning aid, goes to her rescue, accompanied by his sister.

Four young college students find themselves with no money and a lot of debts. Each has received a peremptory refusal from home to send any more money to them and they are in despair. Suddenly Claude has an idea. They will hire Susan B. Gabonthy to lecture for them, clear about one hundred dollars apiece, and have enough to tide them over into the next term.

Employed as secretary to Howard Abele, Marjorie Abbott attracts the attention of Sydney, her employer's son, who falls desperately in love with her. Mr. Abele is strenuously opposed to their marriage and he quarrels with his son. Marjorie has a half-brother, Dave, who is of an inventive turn of mind.

Emphatically opposed to Jack Moss, old Mr. McGillicuddy puts the ban on his marriage to his daughter Dolly. The old gentleman is adamant to the appeals of the young lovers and interposes his interference on every occasion, when they get together. McGillicuddy is seized with an attack of the gout, which handicaps him, and it is then Jack arranges with Dolly to elope.

A drama about a poor composer who is betrayed by his family and left alone.

Everybody's ordered out on a strike when Benjamin Cohen, proprietor of a sweat-shop, reduces the employees' wages ten per cent. Rebecca Barish, a young Jewess, and her father, reluctantly go out with the rest. Unable to find other work, their circumstances become so reduced that Rebecca is obliged to go to the pawnshop with some of their belongings, and while there, Jacob Stattler, the pawnbroker, takes a fancy to her, and offers her father, through a schatehen, five hundred dollars to give her to him in manage.

Peter Barton leaves his wealth to his niece, Mary, disinheriting his dissipated son, Edgar, who steals the will. Jack Smart, a rascal, an associate of Edgar's, keeps close watch upon him. At the point of a revolver he compels Edgar to surrender the will to him. Mary, the niece, is obliged to go to work, takes a position as a reporter, and meets Tom Swayne, who falls in love with her. Tom sees Jack Smart in a restaurant, and after the villain leaves, Tom picks up a menu card, upon which Smart has written some hieroglyphics. Mary shows him an envelope which she picked up in her uncle's room, where Smart took the will from Edgar, after he had stolen it. Tom compares it and the hieroglyphics on it with those on the menu card. They are the same.

Set in Biblical times, this tells the story of how Jesus affected the lives of two people: Joseph, a young Jewish man, and Maximums, a centurion in the Roman army.

A Western drama in which a gang steals John’s horse and then kidnaps Polly when she tries to warn the new buyer.

A mountaineer, who has been shot by a pursuing sheriff, is concealed by a mountain girl in her cabin. When the sheriff arrives, she gives him whiskey, while secretly removing the bullets from his gun.