(archive footage)
Film clips highlight the funniest scenes and brightest comic stars in MGM's history.
Miss Lovelace (uncredited)
A newspaper editor goes on an anti-crime crusade, but gets carried away.
Miss Millie
While investigating the theft of a valuable jade statue known as "The Missing Lady" -- and the subsequent murder of an art dealer -- imperceptible sleuth Lamont Cranston aka the Shadow (Kane Richmond) finds himself being blamed for the crime. It doesn't help the Shadow's claims of innocence when more bodies begin piling up. Good thing he knows exactly who's guilty among an increasingly smaller group of suspects.
Mrs. Mulberry - Recital Guest (uncredited)
Abigail Chandler has written her stuffy Boston relatives that she's a successful opera singer in New York. In reality, she works at a burlesque house and is billed as High-C Susie. When her sister Martha comes for a visit, Abigail tries to hide the truth from her.
Miss Peavy
On a trip to visit his parents, detective Nick Charles gets mixed up in a murder investigation.
Hospital Nurse (uncredited)
A small-town girl with a soft spot for American soldiers wakes up the morning after a wild farewell party for the troops to find that she married someone she can't remember.
Martha Williams
Residents get suspicious when a shady character takes over the local hunting lodge right after the two old-timers who own it disappear.
Harriet Wooley (uncredited)
Rocksford, New England, 1672. Puritan witch hunter Jonathan Wooley is cursed after burning a witch at the stake: his descendants will never find happiness in their marriages. At present, politician Wallace Wooley, who is running for state governor, is about to marry his sponsor's daughter.
Passenger (uncredited)
The brother of a notorious outlaw is put in a charge of a stagecoach line way station in dangerous Apache territory. A stagecoach arrives at the station with a valuable box of cargo, and the outlaw brother soon shows up, though denying that he's planning to take the cargo box. Soon, however, rampaging Apaches attack the station, and the station manager, his brother and a disparate group of passengers and employees must fight them off.
Miss Updike
Christopher Reynolds, an American flying with the R.A.F, is shot down over German-occupied Holland and is given shelter by a Dutch family. Posing as the insane husband of the daughter of the house, Anita Wolverman, Reynolds convinces the German officer quartered there, Major Zellfritz, with the necessity for her divorce decree to be granted. After the court-hearing, Anita, goes to manage a home for retired ladies and, persuaded by Reynolds, tries to gain military information from the German Officer. When her former husband escapes from the insane-asylum his exploits are blamed on Reynolds. With the help of the old ladies and Anita, who "remarries" him, Reynolds escapes to England in a stolen German airplane.
Miss Hollyrod - Bird Lover (uncredited)
A woman attempts to shelter a young girl from the publicity surrounding her socialite parents' divorce.
Casket Customer
Faith and Hope Banner, sisters, are "convention hostesses" in a hotel. A body is discovered next door as the magician's convention is leaving and the mortician's convention is arriving, and the sisters, with help from manager Wilburforce Puddle, try to hide it. Complicating matters, Hope's boyfriend, Tommy, is a newspaper reporter in the hotel covering some labor negotiations.
Charwoman
Steve is a shy quiet man who is an executive for a shipping firm. He meets Dot at the Opera where she had his seats and the next day she shows up as his temporary secretary. Then Coffee Cup comes to town to see Dot, his gal. When Steven is with Cecilia, everything is boring. When he is with Dot and Coffee Cup, everything is exciting and he falls for Dot. But Coffee is getting out of the Navy in a few days and he plans to marry Dot.
Head of Orphanage
Jo March and her husband Professor Bhaer operate the Plumfield School for poor boys. When Dan, a tough street kid, comes to the school, he wins Jo's heart despite his hard edge, and she defends him when he is falsely accused. Dan's foster father, Major Burdle, is a swindler in cahoots with another crook called Willie the Fox. When the Plumfield School becomes in danger of foreclosure, the two con men cook up a scheme to save the home.
Lompoc Ladies Auxiliary (uncredited)
Egbert Sousé becomes an unexpected hero when a bank robber falls over a bench he's occupying. Now considered brave, Egbert is given a job as a bank guard. Soon, he is approached by charlatan J. Frothingham Waterbury about buying shares in a mining company. Egbert persuades teller Og Oggilby to lend him bank money, to be returned when the scheme pays off. Unfortunately, bank inspector Snoopington then makes a surprise appearance.
Righteous Old Lady
Wendy Ballantine's parents decide to retire from show biz so she can have a normal life. They are unwelcome in the small town until a storm lets the family show their stuff.
Women's Club President
Two strangers split a sweepstake prize to go on a fake honeymoon with predictable results.
Miss Eggleston
Jackie Cooper stars in this first film in the wholesome "Henry Aldrich" series of teen comedies.
Mrs. Beckett (uncredited)
Nicky Nelson is a fast-talking sideshow barker with a wax-and-alive concession on Atlantic City's boardwalk. Even with the band of his friend, struggling musician Gene Krupa, playing on the sidewalk to attract the customers, "The Living Corpse" and other low-rent acts aren't enough to lure the seen-it-all boardwalk strollers, and the landlord closes the show in lieu of never-paid rent. Nicky, always promoting, goes to Stephen Hanratty, head of the pier's Dance Pavilion, to plug Krupa's band as an attraction, but Hanratty won't even listen to them. But, while there, he meets singer Lily Racquel, who knows he is a phoney but might have the ability to to talk a radio-station manager into giving her an audition. She gives him a ring to help finance the project; he promptly loses it in a crap-game.
Snoring Woman on Train (uncredited)
One of the last bills signed by President Lincoln authorizes pushing the Union Pacific Railroad across the wilderness to California. But financial opportunist Asa Barrows hopes to profit from obstructing it. Chief troubleshooter Jeff Butler has his hands full fighting Barrows' agent, gambler Sid Campeau; Campeau's partner Dick Allen is Jeff's war buddy and rival suitor for engineer's daughter Molly Monahan. Who will survive the effort to push the railroad through at any cost?
Miss Jenkins
Alexander Graham Bell falls in love with deaf girl Mabel Hubbard while teaching the deaf and trying to invent means for telegraphing the human voice. She urges him to put off thoughts of marriage until his experiments are complete. He invents the telephone, marries and becomes rich and famous, though his happiness is threatened when a rival company sets out to ruin him.
Boone's Landlady (uncredited)
アパッチ族におびえながら荒野を走る駅馬車に、脱獄囚リンゴが同乗、アパッチの追撃をかわしてゆくが……。映画史に残る西部劇の決定版として知られるジョン・ウェイン主演の名作。
Mrs. Shackleford
Huckleberry Finn, a rambunctious boy adventurer chafing under the bonds of civilization, escapes his humdrum world and his selfish, plotting father by sailing a raft down the Mississippi River.
Widow Peddie
A dull statistician changes his life after winning a pile of money after successfully determining the number of beans in a barrel. He decides to do something novel with the prize and ends up buying a barrel factory. He encounters trouble when the nearby pickle factory is threatened by a shyster attempting to close it.
English Woman
In Shanghai amidst Sino-Japanese warfare an adventurer (Sanders) collecting money from gun suppliers falls in loves with a French singer (Del Rio).
Dressmaker
The Jones family drugstore is robbed and it looks like the culprit is a boy the family has taken a liking to.
Schoolteacher (uncredited)
When a small-town girl is incorrectly diagnosed with a rare, deadly disease, an unknowing newspaper columnist turns her into a national heroine.
Leader of Committee (uncredited)
A young singer hopes to become a success on Broadway.
Housekeeper
Detective Hank Hyer investigates a blackmail case involving a candidate for mayor.
Elderly lady (uncredited)
Dwight Stanford and his wife, Penny, are a pair of spendthrifts who can't hold on to money, dependent for support on Dwight's rich uncle, who sends them a monthly allowance. Conrad Norris, Dwight's cousin, disapproves of Dwight and Penny, and resents his uncle's generosity. The uncle is the victim of a hit-and-run accident and, there being no will, Conrad, as next of kin, inherits. Switch, the uncle's lawyer, tells Dwight he is shutout with no hope of appeal. Dwight starts writing mystery novels about a fictional detective named Steven Knight, which become instant hits and the money pours in.
Miss Swerf
J.B. Ball, a rich financier, gets fed up with his free-spending family. He takes his wife's just-bought (very expensive) sable coat and throws it out the window, it lands on poor hard-working girl Mary Smith. But it isn't so easy to just give away something so valuable, as he soon learns.
One of a series of movies based on the character Philo Vance
Wealthy widow Mrs. Bramson notices that her maid is distracted, and when she learns the girl's fiancé, Danny, is the reason, she summons him in. Mrs. Bramson's niece Olivia takes a liking to Danny, and comes to believe that he may have been involved in the disappearance of a local woman.
Train Passenger
n Vienna, a new jazz club featuring American trumpeter Buzzy Bellew threatens the existence of its neighbor, the Waltz Palace, run by Franz Strauss and featuring his granddaughter, singer Elsa. Smitten by Elsa, Buzzy hides his identity and association with the club -- whose owner intends to buy out the Palace property. When Elsa accidentally learns who Buzzy really is, it appears he may have to return to America alone.
Old Maid at Dog Show
Story of a dog that is fanatically devoted to its master.
Miss Elkins (uncredited)
College students rally to save a struggling hotel from closing. Comedy.
Home Economics Woman
A cream-of-the-crop gathering of 1930's radio stars, who lend themselves to a storyline about a failing radio station which needs to put on a huge ratings winner to have any chance of continued operation. An interesting mixture of the stars whose fame continued to grow, those who became bit players in show business history, and those who have been forgotten entirely, except at the Internet Movie Database of course!
A wealthy mama's boy finds himself the victim of con artists involved in an oil stocks racket.
Albert's Mother (uncredited)
Joe, who owns a gas station along with his brothers and is about to marry Katherine, travels to the small town where she lives to visit her, but is wrongly mistaken for a wanted kidnapper and arrested.
Mrs. Robinson
A runaway orphan is befriended by a kind-hearted pet store owner with a criminal past.
Landlady (uncredited)
Jonathan Pride is a mild-mannered dance instructor in 1820 Boston. En route to visit relatives, Jonathan is shanghaied by a band of zany pirates and forced to work as a galley boy. When the pirate vessel arrives at the port of Las Palomas, Jonathan, clad in buccaneer's garb, makes his escape. Everyone in Las Palomas, including Governor Alcalde (Frank Morgan) and fetching senorita Serafina (Steffi Duna), assumes that Jonathan is the pirate chieftain, leading to a series of typical comic-opera complications.
Miss Curtiss
A Broadway playboy inherits an almost bankrupt girls' school and tries to save it by a big show.
Mrs. Potter, Landlady
Ford Adams regains consciousness in Boston, bloody and suffering from amnesia. Information he eventually uncovers (with the help of Marie Smith) connects him to a well-known producer--who's just been murdered.
Townswoman at Party
A family living on a farm in Maine takes in a young woman to stay with them, not knowing that the woman is not quite what she seems and has a secret in her past that she hasn't told them about.
Beauty Products Announcer (uncredited)
Thelma and Patsy get jobs at a radio station.
Housekeeper (uncredited)
Romance strikes when a vacationing millionairess and her daughter and son spend their vacation at a posh New England resort.
Granny Adams
A story of the Michigan State Police and the strong sense of loyalty and duty it instills in its men. It follows the career of a newly-inducted rookie, Ross Martin, who has joined the force at the urging of his sweetheart, Mary Adams. Martin soon distinguishes himself by his bravery in the apprehension of criminals. But when the leader of a gang of bank robbers falls into his hands and then escapes, because of carelessness on Martin's part, he is suspended from the force.
Customer (uncredited)
This Technicolor short features the songs of the great American popular composer Stephen Collins Foster. Based on Foster's memoirs.
Ship's Matron (uncredited)
Everyweek Newsmagazine editor Richard Kurt pursues famous free-spirited portrait artist Marion Forsythe on her return to the states from Europe, seeking to convince her to write her biography as a feature for his magazine. One of Marion's old beaus, now running for U.S. Senator from their home state, also comes calling.
Animal Woman (uncredited)
A prince from a small kingdom courts a wealthy widow to keep her money in the country.
Head Nurse
Patsy tries to stay with Thelma at the hospital where she works, but Thelma is forced to pretend that Patsy is a patient.
Duchess
A parable about magic glasses involving on the nature of beauty, truth, good, and evil set in 17th Century Germany with music and Glorious Technicolor.
Edith (uncredited)
Richard, a millionaire in love with his secretary, Diane, is dispirited when his wife refuses to divorce him. Concerned that Diane will now lose interest, Richard offers her an all-expense-paid cruise to Argentina so that she can think it over. While traveling, however, Diane falls in love with fellow traveler Mike. She resolves to come clean to Richard, but upon return she becomes conflicted when she finds out he was able to get divorced after all.
Subway Passenger (uncredited)
The girls buy a country home that turns out to be a sand trap.
Mrs. Trutmanner (uncredited)
After being fired from his job at the Marriage License Bureau, a clerk turns to matchmaking.
Mrs. Wendelschaffer
The Great McGonigle and his troupe of third-rate vaudevillians manage to stay one step ahead of the bill collectors and the sheriff.
The Streams' Housekeeper (uncredited)
A railroad tycoon, disillusioned with his marriage, starts seeing a showgirl. Things go agreeably until the woman's manager decides to blackmail the millionaire.
Schoolteacher
A young Navajo defies tribal custom to marry an outcast.
Mrs. Price
Sam Bisbee is an inventor whose works (e.g., a keyhole finder for drunks) have brought him only poverty. His daughter is in love with the son of the town snob. Events conspire to ruin his bullet-proof tire just as success seems near. Another of his inventions prohibits him from committing suicide, so Sam decides to go on living.
Mrs. Twitchett
Oddly enough for a Roach comedy the premise of MIXED NUTS is grounded in topical political satire aimed at the New Deal, although the satire is of a very lightweight (and light-hearted) nature. The film begins at a city council meeting where an unidentified politician announces that the government has released $50,000 for the relief of unemployed plumbers. This prompts applause, but also a pointed question from an angry woman who wants to know what the government is going to do for the members of her profession: chorus girls. The politician glibly replies that the administration has set aside money—two million dollars, no less!—for the re-education of chorus girls, "to fit them for the better things in life."
Miss Pettigrew
Three con artists dupe two Olympians into serving as editors of a new health and beauty magazine which is only a front for salacious stories and pictures.
Tom's Secretary (uncredited)
An independent woman can't choose between the two men she loves.
Briarcroft's Teacher
The film tells the story of Sylvia, a French teacher at an all-girl school, who wants to find love. When she hears Bill Williams on the radio, she decides to go visit and thank him. However, difficult problems lay ahead when Lili gets in the way.
Professor Winterbottom (uncredited)
A charlatan posing as Baron Munchhausen is invited to be guest speaker at a girls' school.
Miss Gilford, Kitty's Music Store Boss
Kitty Lorraine has one purpose in life: turning her daughter Shirley into a star. Kitty controls every aspect of the girl's nascent career -- even blackmailing a stage manager so that Shirley can take a more prestigious gig. But Kitty goes too far when she breaks up her daughter's budding relationship with sweet artist Warren Foster. Heartbroken, Shirley sets off on a series of disastrous but profitable relationships.
Aunt Emily Banning
In this engaging adaptation of James Gould Cozzen's novel The Last Adam, film icon Will Rogers portrays Dr. George Bull, a compassionate, highly regarded small-town physician who often prescribes a healthy dose of common sense! But when Bull begins dating a widow (Vera Allen), the local gossips misconstrue the story. To make matters worse, Bull's plainspoken manner earns him an enemy in the wealthy owner of a nearby construction camp. But once it's learned that the camp has caused illness by polluting the local water supply, the good doctor steps in to try to restore the town's health - and his reputation!
Smythe (maid)
Peg and her father live a simple life in an Irish fishing village. One day Sir Gerald arrives at the village to tell Pat that Peg is heir to estate of her grandfather, who hated Pat. The upshot of the will is that she must go to England for 3 years to learn to be a lady and that Pat can never see her again.
Muriel's mother
Charley, hoping to find cultured people in his ancestry in order to be suitable to Muriel's family, is tricked by his rival Ronnie into believing himself a descendant of Tarzan. Conked on the head, Charley suddenly believes he IS Tarzan.
Tall Window-Shopper (Uncredited)
Gunner and Bucker are friends who work as riveters. Whenever Bucker gets the urge to marry, which is often, Gunner will hit on his girl to see if she is true or not. So far, Gunner hasn't failed. But one night, while Gunner is in jail, Bucker meets Mary, a tough dame with a line. He falls for her, and she falls for his money. But Mary is already a gal pal of Gunner, and no two know about the third one. The trouble starts when the triangle is revealed too late.
Spinster in Park
A white youth who is raised in the jungle by the animals is captured by a safari and brought back to civilization as an attraction in a circus.
Miss Winterbottom
When the boys run over a dummy, they think they've killed someone. They decide to dispose of the "body" and mistake a seminary for a cemetery.
Female Police Officer
The girls moonlight as taxi dancers in order to earn some extra money.
Mrs. Cecil
Charley's boss "rehearses" for his honeymoon--with Charley.
Gossip on Telephone (Uncredited)
A pretty but virtuous small-town bank clerk is the victim of a vicious rumor from an unsuccessful suitor that she spent the night with a notorious womanizer.
Miss Tuttle, Principal
Although terrified of girls, Charley must take a job teaching at a girls school.
Welfare Association Officer (uncredited)
The story begins in 1917 with Stan and Ollie being drafted into the U.S. Army to fight in World War I. While in the Army, the pair befriend a man named Eddie Smith, who is killed by the enemy during a battle. After the war is over, Stan and Ollie venture to New York City, where they begin a quest to reunite Eddie's little daughter with her rightful family. The task proves both monumental and problematic as the boys discover just how many people in New York have the last name Smith.
Saleslady
Jim Gladden, a construction site foreman, is partially responsible for the accidental death of one of his workers, Fred Smith, and makes good on Fred's deathbed request to go to Scotch Valley and take care of his surviving wife and children. When Jim arrives in the small town, he is told that there are two Fred Smith families in Scotch Valley, the rich Smiths and the poor Smiths. Jim assumes that the Smiths he is looking for are the poor ones, and is directed to a house where four children live in poverty.
Landlady (uncredited)
A newlywed discovers her husband is a cheating phony.
Nurse (uncredited)
A medical researcher is sent to a plague outbreak, where he has to decide priorities for the use of a vaccine.
Malcom's Nurse (uncredited)
A mob boss has a change of heart when his daughter convinces him to move on from crime.
Alice Simpson - Welfare Worker
The setting is a city block during a sweltering summer, where the residents serve as representatives of the not-very-idealized American melting pot. There is idle chitchat, gossip, jealousy, racism, adultery, and suddenly but not unexpectedly, a murder.
Hotel Proprietress
A little orphan girl walks into the life of a hand-to-mouth carnival huckster. He teaches her the ropes and raises her as his own.
Helen and Angie's Landlady (uncredited)
After a tumultuous first marriage, Millie Blake learns to love her newfound independence and drags her feet on the possibility of remarriage. The years pass, and now Millie's daughter garners the attentions of men-- Men who once devoted their time to her mother.
Mrs. Partridge
Rubber-legged comedian Leon Errol made his talkie starring bow in Paramount's Only Saps Work. Based on a play by Owen Davis Sr., the film casts Errol as James Wilson, a kleptomaniac who starts with picking pockets and ends up robbing a bank. Wilson's friend Lawrence Payne (Richard Arlen) inadvertently aids our hero during one of his heists, ending up in deep doo-doo with the law. Before Wilson is able to extricate Payne from his dilemma for the sake of heroine Barbara Tanner (Mary Brian), he pauses long enough to pose as a private eye -- and even gives bellboy Oscar (Stu Erwin) tips on how to spot a crook! If only all of Leon Errol's feature films had been as consistently hilarious as Only Saps Work.
Helen's Maid (uncredited)
When World War I breaks out, brothers Roy and Monte Rutledge, each attending Oxford university, enlist with the Royal Flying Corps.
Dr. Zernecke
On the day before his second wedding, a man finds out that his bride-to-be has had a baby.
The villainous master criminal Dr. Fu Manchu sets out to destroy the people he holds responsible for the death of his family.
Amelia Twymley
While a Canadian soldier recovers in London, a nurse tells him that a Scottish widow believes he is her son. To comfort the widow, the soldier agrees to pretend to be her Scottish son. Seven Days Leave is a screen adaption of one of James M. Barrie's plays, The Old Lady Shows Her Medals.
(uncredited)
Moore plays the "dual" role of a French singer in America who was originally an American chorus girl in France to acquire a new persona.
Old Witch
A young man of society wants to make an expedition to Africa, but his fiancée asks him for help about one of her fathers guests shortly before his planed departure. Her suspects about that guest were serious, this man tries to steal one of her fathers rubin, and she and her fiance are kidnapped and brought to a house, where strange things happen. The whole thing becomes a nightmare under the direction of a mysterious Mr. Satan.
Mrs. Crandall
A woman thinks a small dog is an angel pet in this silent comedy.
The Mayor
In this comedy-western, based on the life of Henry Irving Dodge, our cowboy hero keeps his tongue firmly planted in his cheek as he goes up against a town run by such women as newly elected sheriff, Carrie Patience. Hoping to restore some masculinity to the sheriff's office, Gibson stages a series of fake hold-ups but is soon upstaged by a real crook
Julia
An English explorer disturbed by the practices of an isolated tribe attempts to rescue a native girl he has become fascinated with. THE DEVIL DANCER was highly praised at time of release for its exquisite cinematography, especially in the use of light and shadow. The film received an Academy Award nomination in this category. Sadly, it is among the lost. No prints or negatives are known to survive.
(uncredited)
Too Many Crooks is a lost 1927 American comedy silent film directed by Fred C. Newmeyer, written by E.J. Rath and Rex Taylor, and starring Mildred Davis, Lloyd Hughes, George Bancroft, El Brendel, William V. Mong, John St. Polis, and Otto Matieson. It was released on April 2, 1927, by Paramount Pictures.
Matron Helen Hunt
When the girls on campus learn that Tom Drake is so super-shy that he never kissed a girl, they begin betting which one will kiss him first. So the girls line up to try to get their lips on him. However, in this and subsequent scenes, crazy stuff keeps happening to prevent him from getting that kiss.
Mrs. Lodge
Ray Sturgis, leader of the fashionable Long Island jazz set, is engaged to "Egypt" Hagen, an up-to-date girl in every respect. Egypt is arrested at a roadhouse raid, and at her mother's bidding, the Reverend Norman Lodge arranges for her freedom. At a fancy-dress ball, when Ray wears a costume made of newspaper headlines concerning her arrest, Egypt is offended. Seen constantly in the company of Reverend Lodge, her reputation causes church people to take up the matter with the bishop. Leaving the country club, Egypt goes to the Lodge home and hides behind the door when the bishop arrives; Reverend Lodge wants to marry her, and they admit their love; but humiliation causes her to leave with Sturgis that night. Their yacht is wrecked, but Lodge and the bishop follow and rescue Egypt, though Sturgis is drowned. The bishop, realizing the depth of their love, consents to marry them.
School Teacher
Trouble begins when Mme. Girard steps out on her husband, Criquette's father, to fool around with rakish Phillippe Levaux. When Monsieur Girard finds out, Criquette saves her stepmother from scandal by tricking Levaux into a hasty marriage.
Mrs. Randall
Cowboy Jerry Alton is content with life on the Bar Z Ranch until Mrs. Randall hires pretty Marian Faer to assist in cooking. Marian explains that she is looking for a redheaded husband. All the men are smitten with her, and several, including Jerry, try to dye their hair red.
Mrs. Hart
A young man inherits a mansion in a Florida swamp from an uncle he never knew he had. When he, his assistant and the estate's executor arrive at the house, the audience catches sight of someone crawling in the window, though the house is supposed to be unoccupied. As the house staff begins to arrive they sense a strange presence in the house, and when a young woman no one knows runs into the house to escape a knife-wielding psycho, the occupants realize they may be in danger from both outside and inside the house.
Dr. Cecil Grantham
A remake of a 1915 Tom Mix/Selig Western, this film was yet another silent oater (loosely) based on a story by popular pulp fiction writer Peter B. Kyne. Chip Bennett, a Flying U ranch hand-turned-cartoonist, despite being a confirmed misogynist falls in love with Della Whitmore, a lady doctor and sister of his employer.
Countess Casanova
His Majesty, Bunker Bean is a 1925 silent film comedy directed by Harry Beaumont and starring Matt Moore. It is based on a 1916 play, His Majesty, Bunker Bean by Lee Wilson Dodd, taken from a novel Bunker Bean by Harry Leon Wilson. It was produced and distributed by Warner Brothers.
Matilda Shields - in play
A man searches for the villains who murdered his parents
Townswoman
A charming pastoral about two unwanted children finding acceptance and love, Timothys Quest (1922) is a rare, cinematic gem based on a novel by Kate Douglas Wiggin (Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm), who was then known as Americas best loved author of stories about children.
A blind cobbler is able, by dint of his extraordinary hearing, to recognize the identity of a murderer. His own son is accused of the killing, and the old man waits, knowing the murderer will return to prevent the blind man from revealing what he knows.
For revenge, wealthy Osbert Gault marries Virginia Mynors, the daughter of a woman who had jilted him years earlier. Unaware of Gault's motives, Virginia consents to the marriage for the sake of her impoverished family.
Emily
Letters from the late mother of orphaned sisters Jane and Katherine seem to indicate that their father is Capt. Bob Dutton. Under orders from his superior, Colonel Harding, to acknowledge the children or quit the service, Dutton accepts responsibility for them. Shocked by his presumably checkered past, Cecile Harding, Dutton's fiancée and the colonel's daughter, breaks their engagement. One evening Jane surprises Capt. Robert Duncan, Dutton's rival for Cecile, stealing Bob's papers.
When Tourneur adapted the allegorical plays The Blue Bird by Belgian symbolist Maurice Maeterlinck and Prunella by British playwrights Harley Granville Barker and Lawrence Housman in 1918, they had been successfully staged for many years, opening in Moscow and on Broadway and everywhere. Today, the saccharine charm of these anti-modern fairy tales doesn’t work any more. But undistracted by the meaning or action of the film, we can enjoy the surface of Prunella all the better, the dazzling sets and costumes, silhouettes and painted backdrops created by the great art director Ben Carré in a fashionable Art Déco Neo-Rococo style.
Undetermined Role (uncredited)
A dying stranger abandons a baby girl in a gypsy camp, with a note explaining that on her eighteenth birthday, she is to inherit a Virginia estate. The gypsy chief, aware of the girl's value, instructs Sabia, the tribe's matron, to dress and rear her as a boy. Years later, while the tribe is traveling in Virginia, Vosho, the chief's son, discovers the true sex of the girl, now called Firefly, and demands to marry her.
Miss McPherson
Princess Sylvia refuses to marry the Emperor Maximilian of Rhaetia because his proposal has been offered for diplomatic rather than romantic reasons. Learning that Maximilian is traveling to a hunting lodge in a small village, Sylvia follows him, disguised as an untitled English girl, and the emperor immediately falls in love with her.
One of Gwendolyn's Teachers (uncredited)
Gwen's family is rich, but her parents ignore her and most of the servants push her around, so she is lonely and unhappy. Her father is concerned only with making money, and her mother cares only about her social position. But one day a servant's irresponsibility creates a crisis that causes everyone to rethink what is important to them.
Gossip in Ice Cream Parlor / Woman Having Picture Taken
Tillie and her neighbor Mr. Pipkins are both distraught over their respective marriages. One day, they sneak off to have a lively time at Coney Island. They flee the park together just as their spouses come to find them. After a chase, each is rescued from the ocean and reconcile with their respective spouses.
Spinster (uncredited)
An attractive young girl struggles to hold a job as she deals with unwanted romantic advances from her boss.
Mrs Gossip
Mr. Cherub is considered by all tne world to be a model husband. Housewives hold him up as a shining example to their husbands. In truth, however, Mr. Cherub is anything but a virtuous husband.
