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.
A high-flying action film involving a pilot battling air mail robberies.
'Gentle' Laaadley
Hero is center of plot by a gang of lawless whites to convince Indians he killed one of their number, but finally clears himself.
Rance Sheldon
William Gordon, Jr. is the rebellious heir to a million dollar airplane business. He leaves home in search of adventure, and falls in love with Helen, the daughter of an eccentric, destitute inventor. William enters an air race using a souped-up plane.
Anthony Walford
A man kills a man he finds alone with his wife. Although she is innocent of any wrong doing the wife claims to be guilty of having an affair to save her husband from a death sentence. Unfortunately, the husband also believes her guilt and so he runs off to Africa to forget and assumes a new identity.
Directed by David Selman. With Dorothy Phillips, Earl Metcalfe, Lola Todd, Lincoln Stedman.
Col. Ralph Dangerfield
A British nobleman, heavily in debut to a moneylender, agrees to marry the man's daughter in exchange for his debt being cleared. However, since the girl is Jewish, her new "husband" lets her know that the marriage is strictly a business matter and that he could never have romantic feelings for one of "her kind".
Burl
Johnny works as a Western Union messenger, while his mother earns a meager living with an old sewing machine. One day he interrupts a robbery, scares off the thieves, and rescues a beautiful young girl. Later he captures the robbers, and receives a $1,000 reward given him by the girl's father, Johnny happily buys his mother a new sewing machine.
Mortimer Pearson
A desert prospecter, Dick Norton, decides to head to the Klondike in search of gold. In the Klondike, Norton becomes a mining engineer whose honesty upsets a crooked Mortimer Pearson. Norton's girlfriend, Violet Winter and her father suddenly arrive in town.
Nicolai Orloff
Sheriff
When Buffalo Bill Cody learns that the Union Pacific railroad is making its way through Kansas, he and other heroes of the Wild West join forces to build a town along the route.
Aviator
Goldwyn produced a 1923 film adaptation of Potash and Perlmutter, and a 1924 sequel called In Hollywood with Potash and Perlmutter. In Partners Again the two are in the automobile industry -- This is a lost Film.
Basil Morgan
When the Indians attack, a doctor is separated from his wife. The reunion is set against the heroism of the foremost Indian scout of the day...Kit Carson!
Lt. Riddle
Also known as The Man Without a Country
Phil
A Dog Picture That'll Claw Your Emotions
Lem Darley
A young man in South Carolina inherits property in a valley he has never visited before. On arriving he is mistaken by the locals for a revenue officer intent on enforcing the Volstead Act on Prohibition. As the whole area lives off the moonshining trade, this prevents problems - particularly when he falls in love with the daughter of the head of the local producers.
Lem Darley
A city visitor falls for a mountain girl and collides with her family of rustic moonshiners.
Rufus Tyler
Halfway through a transcontinental auto race, Dutton Hardmere discovers foul play.
Frank Maxwell
Two factory owners, Hiram Maxwell (Walter McEwen) and Nicholas Harding (Frazer Coulter) are almost polar opposites -- Maxwell pays careful attention to his employees needs, while Harding totally disregards them. Maxwell's son, Frank (Earl Metcalfe), is very much like his father, and he is engaged to Harding's daughter, Ethel (Alice Reeves), who, unfortunately, has some of her father's less appealing traits. Naturally, she's not thrilled when he goes to work amongst the laborers at her father's factory. One of the other workers is Ruth Kravo (Gina Reilly), and both Frank and Ivan Koyloff (Boris Rosenthal) are attracted to her. One night when Frank calls on Ruth, Ivan jealously stabs him. The trouble this causes loses Ruth her job, but she goes to work as a secret service agent amongst her own people.
The Gangster
An anthology of three dramas over the course of one evening in New York, with separate characters in each story played in all three by Marc MacDermott and Estelle Taylor. In one, a woman who has married believing her first and wrothless husband has been killed finds him returning to her for blackmail. The second part is the life of a cabaret vamp and a detective tricking each other, while the third story recalls a man who realizes his son's wife is cheating upon him with the man who lives in the apartment above him.
There is distress in the West household after young Dr. West disappears mysteriously, causing his mother to notify the police, who assign the search to Detective Rhombus. The cause of all this excitement resides in the Parker apartment on the floor above where the doctor has gone to call on his sweetheart Kitty. She is in a dither because her father has decreed that she marry Gus Woozle, the pickle king. Dr. West and Kitty are planning to elope, but when her father returns unexpectedly, Kitty hides her lover in the boudoir. Parker tells his daughter that he has sent for Alderman Smiggles to officiate at her wedding and, to prevent any deviation in his plans, locks Kitty in her bedroom. Soon after, the detective arrives and arrests both Woozle and Parker for the doctor's disappearance. In their absence, Alderman Smiggles arrives and marries Kitty to the doctor.
Lt. Sawyer
A naive young woman's strong anti-war sentiments get her into trouble in this silent cautionary tale. She is such a devout pacifist that she spurns her lover when she learns that he has invented an aerial torpedo. Instead, she gets involved with a foreigner who swears that he totally shares her beliefs. Unfortunately, he is a foreign spy in disguise. At his urging, the innocent girl steals her ex-beau's plans and delivers them to the spy. When she learns that he is the enemy, she fights him and with a sword kills him. It is still not enough to stop the enemy from attacking an American port city.
Grouch
John Carter is a good fellow. In fact, his good fellowship is Carter's one great fault, for the highballs and cocktails which go with it too frequently make him forget his more serious obligations and are cause for anxiety on the part of his charming fiancée Marybelle. Marybelle's little brother, Billie asks Carter what is making Marybelle so sad. Carter replies evasively, "It's a Ringtailed Rhinoceros." Billie vows to kill the rhino. When Carter fails to appear on time at a dinner which was planned to announce his engagement to Marybelle, and finally arrives intoxicated, her parents in anger force her to break the engagement and forbid Carter the house. Marybelle's rejection of Carter hits him hard.
William Brockway
A costly gem is stolen from a Hindoo idol and brought to America. Introducing numerous startling incidents, including an auto wreck and a leap for life.
Capt. Salvada
Carmelita, jealous of Captain Herbert, who loves Mildred, obtains the assistance of Salvada, a Mexican enemy of Herbert's and personates Mildred, to make the captain jealous...
Juan - the Half-Breed
Dora Miller and her father together with Juan, a young half-breed, live peacefully at their ranch along the Rio Grande. Juan is in love with Dora and she is not averse to him. One morning while the little family is seated at breakfast, shots are heard outside. A party of U.S. soldiers has been attacked by Mexican troops and retreating as they fight, finally taking refuge in the Miller homestead. The doors and windows are barricaded and a sharp fight ensues. Juan, the half-breed, refuses at first to fire against the people whose blood runs in his veins, but at last infuriated by the sight of a wound received by Dora, he grabs the rifle and begins firing furiously. He is thus engaged as the Mexican troops break into the house and is captured by them and locked in an upstairs room.
Bill Crow
A gang terrorizes and controls the waterfront.
Secondary Role
Juan leaves for Rawlins, Arizona, where he wants to find a job so he can marry his fiancee Juanita, because Juanita's mother says a man must have quite substantial savings before he can marry her daughter. Juan takes a job with the railways. When a former employee raids the money train on which Juan is working, he manages to escape with the aid of a trolley, as a result of which the attack can be thwarted. For his courageous act Juan gets two thousand guilders as a reward.