The Rawhide Kid (film)
The Rawhide Kid is a lost 1928 "ethnic" silent western film directed by Del Andrews and starring Hoot Gibson. It was released by Universal Pictures. Hoot Gibson as Dennis O'Hara Georgia Hale as Jessica Silverberg Frank Hagney as J. Francis Jackson William H. Strauss as Simon Silverberg Harry Todd as Comic Thomas G. Lingham as Deputy The Rawhide Kid on IMDb Synopsis at AllMovie
The Rainmaker (1926 film)
The Rainmaker is a lost 1926 American drama silent film directed by Clarence G. Badger and written by Gerald Beaumont, Louis D. Lighton and Hope Loring; the film stars Jr.. Georgia Hale, Ernest Torrence, Brandon Hurst, Joseph J. Dowling and Tom Wilson. Te film was released on May 1926, by Paramount Pictures. William Collier, Jr. as Bobby Robertson Georgia Hale as Nell Wendell Ernest Torrence as Mike Brandon Hurst as Doyle Joseph J. Dowling as Father Murphy Tom Wilson as Chocolate Martha Mattox as Head Nurse Charles K. French as Hospital Doctor Jack Richardson as Western Doctor Melbourne MacDowell as Bennson The Rainmaker on IMDb synopsis at AllMovie
City Lights
City Lights is a 1931 American pre-Code silent romantic comedy film written, directed by, starring Charlie Chaplin. The story follows the misadventures of Chaplin's Tramp as he falls in love with a blind girl and develops a turbulent friendship with an alcoholic millionaire. Although sound films were on the rise when Chaplin started developing the script in 1928, he decided to continue working with silent productions. Filming started in December 1928 and ended in September 1930. City Lights marked the first time Chaplin composed the film score to one of his productions and it was written in six weeks with Arthur Johnston; the main theme, used as a leitmotif for the blind flower girl, is the song "La Violetera" from Spanish composer José Padilla. Chaplin lost a lawsuit to Padilla for not crediting him. City Lights was successful upon release on January 30, 1931 with positive reviews and box office receipts of $5 million. Today, many critics consider it not only the highest accomplishment of Chaplin's career, but one of the greatest films of all time.
In 1991, the Library of Congress selected City Lights for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally or aesthetically significant". In 2007, the American Film Institute ranked it 11th on its list of the best American films made. In 1949, the critic James Agee called the film's final scene "the greatest single piece of acting committed to celluloid". Citizens and dignitaries are assembled for the unveiling of a new monument to "Peace and Prosperity". After droning speeches the veil is lifted to reveal the Little Tramp asleep in the lap of one of the sculpted figures. After several minutes of slapstick he manages to escape the assembly's wrath to perambulate the city, he rebukes two newsboys who taunt him for his shabbiness, while coyly admiring a nude statue has a near-fatal encounter with a sidewalk elevator. The Tramp encounters the beautiful flower girl on a street-corner and in the course of buying a flower realizes she is blind. Through an aural coincidence the girl mistakes her customer for the wealthy owner of a chauffeured automobile.
That evening the Tramp saves a drunken millionaire from suicide. The millionaire takes his new best friend back to his mansion for champagne out for a night on the town. After helping the millionaire home the next morning, he sees the flower girl en route to her street-corner; the Tramp catches up to the girl. After the Tramp leaves, the flower girl tells her grandmother about wealthy friend. Meanwhile, the Tramp returns to the mansion, where the millionaire – now sober – does not remember him and has him thrown out; that day, the millionaire is once more intoxicated and, seeing the Tramp on the street, invites him home for a lavish party. But the next morning history repeats itself: the millionaire is again sober and the Tramp is again out on his ear. Finding that the girl is not at her usual street-corner, the Tramp goes to her apartment, where he overhears a doctor tell the grandmother that the girl is ill: "She has a fever and needs careful attention." Determined to help, the Tramp takes a job as a street sweeper.
On his lunch break he brings the girl groceries. To entertain her he reads a newspaper aloud. "Wonderful I'll be able to see you," says the girl – and the Tramp is struck by what may happen should she gain her sight and discover that he is not the wealthy man she imagines. He finds an eviction notice the girl's grandmother has hidden; as he leaves, he promises the girl. The Tramp returns to work to find himself fired – he has been late once too often. A boxer convinces him to fight in a fake bout, but the boxer flees on learning he is about to be arrested, is replaced by a no-nonsense fighter who knocks the Tramp out despite the Tramp's creative and nimble efforts to keep out of reach. The Tramp encounters the drunken is again invited to the mansion; the Tramp relates the girl's plight and the millionaire gives him money for her operation. Two burglars flee with the rest of his money; the police find the Tramp with the money given him by the millionaire, who because of the knock on the head does not remember giving it.
The Tramp evades the police long enough to get the money to the girl, telling her he will be going away for a time, but in due course he is apprehended and imprisoned. Months the Tramp is released, he goes to the girl's customary street corner but she is not there. We learn, but she has not forgotten her mysterious benefactor, whom she imagines to be rich and handsome: when an elegant man enters the shop she wonders for a moment if "he" has returned. The Tramp happens by the shop, he stoops to retrieve a flower discarded in the gutter. After a brief skirmish with his old nemeses, the newsboys, he turns to the shop's window through which he sees the girl, watching him without knowing who he is. At the sight of her he is frozen for a few seconds breaks into a broad smile; the girl is flattered and giggles to her employee: "I've made a conquest!" Via pantomime through the glass, she kindly offers him a fresh flower as well
The Great Gatsby (1926 film)
The Great Gatsby is a 1926 American silent drama film directed by Herbert Brenon. It is the first film adaptation of the 1925 novel of the same name by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Warner Baxter portrayed Lois Wilson as Daisy Buchanan; the film was produced by Famous Players-Lasky, distributed by Paramount Pictures. The Great Gatsby is now considered lost. A vintage movie trailer displaying short clips of the film still exists. An adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Long Island-set novel, where Midwesterner Nick Carraway is lured into the lavish world of his neighbor, Jay Gatsby. Soon enough, Carraway will see through the cracks of Gatsby's nouveau riche existence, where obsession and tragedy await. Warner Baxter as Jay Gatsby Lois Wilson as Daisy Buchanan Neil Hamilton as Nick Carraway Georgia Hale as Myrtle Wilson William Powell as George Wilson Hale Hamilton as Tom Buchanan George Nash as Charles Wolf Carmelita Geraghty as Jordan Baker Eric Blore as Lord Digby Gunboat Smith as Bert Claire Whitney as Catherine Claude Brooke - Bit part Nancy Kelly - Uncredited role The screenplay was written by Becky Gardiner and Elizabeth Meehan and was based on Owen Davis' stage play treatment of The Great Gatsby.
The play, directed by George Cukor, opened on Broadway at the Ambassador Theatre on February 2, 1926. Shortly after the play opened, Famous Players-Lasky and Paramount Pictures purchased the film rights for $45,000; the film's director Herbert Brenon designed The Great Gatsby as lightweight, popular entertainment, playing up the party scenes at Gatsby's mansion and emphasizing their scandalous elements. The film had 7,296 feet. Mordaunt Hall — The New York Times' first regular film critic — wrote in a contemporary review that the film was "good entertainment, but at the same time it is obvious that it would have benefited by more imaginative direction." He lamented that Herbert Brenon's direction lacked subtlety and that none of the actors convincingly developed their characters. He faulted a scene where Daisy gulps absinthe: "She takes enough of this beverage to render the average person unconscious, yet she appears only mildly intoxicated, soon recovers." Hall describes a scene in which Gatsby "tosses twenty-dollar gold pieces into the water, you see a number of the girls diving for the coins.
A clever bit of comedy is introduced by a girl asking what Gatsby is throwing into the water, as soon as this creature hears that they are real gold pieces she unhesitatingly plunges into the pool to get a share. Gatsby appears to throw the money into the water with a good deal of interest, whereas it might have been more effective to have him appear a little bored as he watched the scramble of the men and women."In contrast to Hall's mixed review, journalist Abel Green's November 1926 review published in Variety was more positive. Green deemed Brenon's production to be "serviceable film material" and "a good, interesting gripping cinema exposition of the type certain to be acclaimed by the average fan, with the usual Long Island parties and the rest of those high-hat trimmings thrown in to clinch the argument." The Variety reviewer observed that Gatsby's "Volstead violating" bootlegging was not "a heinous crime despite the existence of a federal statute which declares it so." The reviewer praised Warner Baxter's portrayal of Gatsby and Neil Hamilton's portrayal of Nick Carraway but found Lois Wilson's interpretation of Daisy to be needlessly unsympathetic.
Professor Wheeler Winston Dixon, the James Ryan Professor of Film Studies at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln made extensive but unsuccessful attempts to find a surviving print. Dixon noted that there were rumors that a copy survived in an unknown archive in Moscow but dismissed these rumors as unfounded. However, the trailer has survived and is one of the 50 films in the three-disc, boxed DVD set More Treasures from American Film Archives, 1894-1931, compiled by the National Film Preservation Foundation from five American film archives; the trailer has a running time of one minute. It was featured on the Blu-Ray released by Warner Home Video of director Baz Luhrmann's 2013 adaptation of The Great Gatsby as a special feature; the Great Gatsby trailer on YouTube The Great Gatsby on IMDb Synopsis at AllMovie
Hollywood
Hollywood is a neighborhood in the central region of Los Angeles, notable as the home of the U. S. film industry, including several of its historic studios. Its name has come to be a shorthand reference for the people associated with it. Hollywood was incorporated as a municipality in 1903, it was consolidated with the city of Los Angeles in 1910 and soon thereafter, a prominent film industry emerged becoming the most recognizable film industry in the world. In 1853, one adobe hut stood in Nopalera, named for the Mexican Nopal cactus indigenous to the area. By 1870, an agricultural community flourished; the area was known as the Cahuenga Valley, after the pass in the Santa Monica Mountains to the north. According to the diary of H. J. Whitley known as the "Father of Hollywood", on his honeymoon in 1886 he stood at the top of the hill looking out over the valley. Along came a Chinese man in a wagon carrying wood; the man bowed. The Chinese man was asked what he was doing and replied, "I holly-wood," meaning'hauling wood.'
H. J. Whitley decided to name his new town Hollywood. "Holly" would represent England and "wood" would represent his Scottish heritage. Whitley had started over 100 towns across the western United States. Whitley arranged to buy the 480 acres E. C. Hurd ranch, they shook hands on the deal. Whitley shared his plans for the new town with General Harrison Gray Otis, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, Ivar Weid, a prominent businessman in the area. Daeida Wilcox learned of the name Hollywood from Ivar Weid, her neighbor in Holly Canyon and a prominent investor and friend of Whitley's, she recommended the same name to Harvey. H. Wilcox, who had purchased 120 acres on February 1, 1887, it wasn't until August 1887 Wilcox decided to use that name and filed with the Los Angeles County Recorder's office on a deed and parcel map of the property. The early real-estate boom busted at the end of that year. By 1900, the region had a post office, newspaper and two markets. Los Angeles, with a population of 102,479 lay 10 miles east through the vineyards, barley fields, citrus groves.
A single-track streetcar line ran down the middle of Prospect Avenue from it, but service was infrequent and the trip took two hours. The old citrus fruit-packing house was converted into a livery stable, improving transportation for the inhabitants of Hollywood; the Hollywood Hotel was opened in 1902 by H. J. Whitley, a president of the Los Pacific Boulevard and Development Company. Having acquired the Hurd ranch and subdivided it, Whitley built the hotel to attract land buyers. Flanking the west side of Highland Avenue, the structure fronted on Prospect Avenue, still a dusty, unpaved road, was graded and graveled; the hotel was to become internationally known and was the center of the civic and social life and home of the stars for many years. Whitley's company sold one of the early residential areas, the Ocean View Tract. Whitley did much to promote the area, he paid thousands of dollars for electric lighting, including bringing electricity and building a bank, as well as a road into the Cahuenga Pass.
The lighting ran for several blocks down Prospect Avenue. Whitley's land was centered on Highland Avenue, his 1918 development, Whitley Heights, was named for him. Hollywood was incorporated as a municipality on November 14, 1903, by a vote of 88 for and 77 against. On January 30, 1904, the voters in Hollywood decided, by a vote of 113 to 96, for the banishment of liquor in the city, except when it was being sold for medicinal purposes. Neither hotels nor restaurants were allowed to serve liquor before or after meals. In 1910, the city voted for merger with Los Angeles in order to secure an adequate water supply and to gain access to the L. A. sewer system. With annexation, the name of Prospect Avenue changed to Hollywood Boulevard and all the street numbers were changed. By 1912, major motion-picture companies had set up production in Los Angeles. In the early 1900s, most motion picture patents were held by Thomas Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company in New Jersey, filmmakers were sued to stop their productions.
To escape this, filmmakers began moving out west to Los Angeles, where attempts to enforce Edison's patents were easier to evade. The weather was ideal and there was quick access to various settings. Los Angeles became the capital of the film industry in the United States; the mountains and low land prices made Hollywood a good place to establish film studios. Director D. W. Griffith was the first to make a motion picture in Hollywood, his 17-minute short film In Old California was filmed for the Biograph Company. Although Hollywood banned movie theaters—of which it had none—before annexation that year, Los Angeles had no such restriction; the first film by a Hollywood studio, Nestor Motion Picture Company, was shot on October 26, 1911. The H. J. Whitley home was used as its set, the unnamed movie was filmed in the middle of their groves at the corner of Whitley Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard; the first studio in Hollywood, the Nestor Company, was established by the New Jersey–based Centaur Company in a roadhouse at 6121 Sunset Boulevard, in October 1911.
Four major film companies – Paramount, Warner Bros. RKO, Columbia – had studios in Hollywood, as did several minor companies and rental studios. In the 1920s, Hollywood was the fifth-largest industry in the nation. By the 1930s, Hollywood studios became vertically integrated, as production and exhibition was controlled by these companies, enabling Hollywood to produce 600 films per year. H
Merna Kennedy
Merna Kennedy was an American actress of the late silent era and the transitional period into talkies. Kennedy was best known during her brief career for her role opposite Charlie Chaplin in the silent film The Circus. Kennedy was brought to the attention of Chaplin by her friend Lita Grey, who became Chaplin's second wife in 1924. A dancer, she had muscular legs. Kennedy continued acting after The Circus, starring in early sound films, but retired in 1934 when she married choreographer/director Busby Berkeley, their marriage broke up a year later. Kennedy died of a heart attack, aged 36, four days after her marriage to Master Sergeant Forrest Brayton. 1928 The Circus 1929 Broadway 1929 Barnum Was Right 1929 Skinner Steps Out 1930 The Rampant Age 1930 Embarrassing Moments 1930 The King of Jazz 1930 Worldly Goods 1930 The Midnight Special 1931 Stepping Out 1932 The Gay Buckaroo 1932 Lady with a Past 1932 Ghost Valley 1932 Come On, Tarzan 1932 The All American 1932 The Red-Haired Alibi 1932 I Like It That Way 1933 Laughter in Hell 1933 Emergency Call 1933 Easy Millions 1933 Don't Bet on Love 1933 I Love That Man 1933 Arizona to Broadway 1933 Police Call 1933 The Big Chance 1933 Son of a Sailor 1934 Wonder Bar 1934 Jimmy the Gent Merna Kennedy on IMDb Merna Kennedy at Virtual History Merna Kennedy at Find a Grave
