Frank Clarke

A petty crook moves to an Ohio town and courts a factory owner's disabled daughter.

The edition of Screen Snapshots celebrates 25 years of production. It looks at the content of edition #1, then a tribute to movie people who have died in those 25 years. Finally there are tributes to the Screen Snapshots series by Cecil De Mille, Walt Disney, Louella Parsons and Rosalind Russell.

Englishmen fighting Nazis in Africa discover an exotic mystery woman living among the natives and enlist her aid in overcoming the Germans.

Ollie is in love with a woman. When he discovers that she is already married, he tries to kill himself. Of course, the suicide is avoided and the boys join the Foreign Legion to get away from their troubles. Finally, they are arrested for trying to desert the Legion and to escape the firing squad by stealing a plane.

A famous aviator helps an amateur enter a cross-country air race for women.

Reporter Nicholas Ranson is jubilant when, on 17 Dec 1903, in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville and Wilbur Wright take their first airplane flight. Back home in Underwood, Maryland, however, his uncle Hiram F. Jenkins, owner and editor of the local newspaper, refuses to print the story. Nicholas quits and continues to work on his own airplane, with the devoted help of his little daughter Peggy. Peggy is actually the first in her family to fly when her friends, Patrick Falconer and Scott Barnes, induce her to get inside a large kite they have made, and run with it in a field until she is airborne. The kite is caught in a tree, however, and Peggy gets a black eye. Later, Nicholas dies when his experimental airplane crashes, leaving his wife and children alone. By Peggy's adulthood, planes are capable of flying at an altitude of 11,000 feet, and speeds of nearly 100 m.p.h. Peggy continues her father's obsession with flight by helping Scott and Pat to build a plane.

Frances Farmer's second film is a typical B-programmer from the Paramount lot of 1936--up and coming stars (John Howard, Robert Cummings, Grant Withers, Farmer) in a concerning the Coast Guard and smugglers. The chief points of interest are the truly exceptional aerial sequences and Farmer's early performance.

A 12-episode serial in which Tailspin Tommy evades volcanoes, anti-aircraft shells, and time bombs as he foils a plan by corrupt profiteers to steal an island's oil reserves.

Zany flying in biplanes of the era.

A sculptor who doesn't want to have any part of World War I is shamed by his girlfriend into joining the army. He becomes a fighter pilot, and undergoes a complete personality change.

When World War I breaks out, brothers Roy and Monte Rutledge, each attending Oxford university, enlist with the Royal Flying Corps.

1928 was the last year when silent films dominated the market, and this aviation-based action serial from Pathe was one of the studio's last. Some pieces are no longer extant (half of chapters 3&6, all of 7, 8, and 9, and the beginning of the 10th and final chapter), but the beginning and end are there as well as enough to follow the action adequately. The surviving Grapevine print is beautifully restored and tinted in spots, although you can tell the print is deteriorated in some of the surviving sections. Basically, an inventor (Josef Swickard, in a role not unlike the one he later played in THE LOST CITY) has created a silencer/muffler for planes to silence any engine sounds, and the bad guys are out to steal the invention and put it to evil use.

Special agent Al Langdon pursues elusive gem smuggler Michael Revere. Going undercover, Langdon joins Revere's gang, and in this capacity is obliged to rescue their beautiful hostage, Mary Lacy.

Bruce Torrence is an aviator and member of the secret service. His rival for the hand of Zella Wingate is Juan Lascelles, a drug smuggler. To get rid of Torrence, Lascelles loosens a wheel on one of his planes, but Zella is the one who goes up in it. Torrence goes up in another plane and attaches a fresh wheel to Zella's plane. In spite of his efforts he later finds her in Lascelles' arms.

Feature version of The Lost City (1920), a fifteen episode serial.