Sally Rand

Dive into more than a century of decadence with this tantalizing look at the evolution of burlesque. Cabaret star Leslie Zemeckis traces the art form from vaudeville-style variety show through its extinction and contemporary rebirth. Vintage photos, film clips and ads illustrate burlesque's resilient history and how the public's sexual appetite kept it alive amid moral and legal ado.

Before the advent of modern-day pornography, a vast and rapidly-paced world of smut peddling was the norm, complete with its own secret history. This documentary reveals the untold story of American cinema's gloriously sordid cinematic past. Starting in the 1920s, expert exploiteer David F. Friedman and Henenlotter navigate us through more than five salacious decades of skin flicks. It's the true story of dirty movies, traced in elegant detail from the bizarre locations where these nudie shorts were screened to the ongoing legal battles fought by their promoters. And of course there are the stories of the innovators themselves, people who often risked their own security and livelihood to make these films, believing in some way that what they were doing wasn't a 'bad' thing - and that it could rake in some dough.

Sally Rand's famous Bubble Dance routine is re-created and reprinted in a 3D-ish effect, this time with extra added foley.

Performances of the greatest exotic dancers are collected here for the first time, from Little Egypt in 1893 to the great striptease headliners of the golden age of Burlesque.

This burlesque-style special featured Don Rickles, Don Adams, Carol Wayne, The Unknown Comic, and Rhonda Shear.

Sally Rand performs her famous fan dance in this 1942 soundie.

A Roman soldier becomes torn between his love for a Christian woman and his loyalty to Emperor Nero.

The complicated relationship between an ambitious, ruthless nightclub dancer and the woman he loves.

Small-time showgirl poses as a stripper to infiltrate a nightclub whose owner is believed responsible for her father's murder.

A New York City boarding house for vaudeville performers, none of whom have any steady work....

The King of Kings is the Greatest Story Ever Told as only Cecil B. DeMille could tell it. In 1927, working with one of the biggest budgets in Hollywood history, DeMille spun the life and Passion of Christ into a silent-era blockbuster. Featuring text drawn directly from the Bible, a cast of thousands, and the great showman’s singular cinematic bag of tricks, The King of Kings is at once spectacular and deeply reverent—part Gospel, part Technicolor epic.

Dave Sethman has been brought up to believe that he is the half-breed son of Sethman, a tough rancher who opposes the plans of John Crawford, an eastern industrialist, to buy up a group of ranches. Crawford comes west with his daughter, Jean, and attempts to break the elder Sethman's opposition. Dave saves Jean from a runaway horse and later protects her when Murdock, Crawford's unprincipled assistant, makes unwanted advances. Sethman plans to rustle Crawford's cattle and is mortally wounded by him, telling Dave, as he lies dying, that Crawford is Dave's real father from whom he was stolen as an infant. Dave and Crawford are reconciled, and Crawford, whom Dave has shot in the hand, tells the boy that Jean is his adopted daughter, leaving the way free for a romance between the young people.

Bob Strong, a detective, goes to prison undercover to befriend Hugh, a young man who was part of a gang that committed a robbery, in order to find out where they hid the money. Strong finally finds out the name of Hugh's partner, who has the money, but things take a complicated turn when Strong falls in love with Hugh's sister.

Two sailors with a rivalry over chasing women become friends. But when one decides to finally settle down, will this mysterious young woman come between them?

Chief Standing Rock's tribe has a treaty protecting their fishing grounds, but a canning corporation is violating the treaty through intimidation and force. The tribe is divided as to how to handle the threat. Standing Rock's son, Braveheart, is sent to college to study law so that he can protect their rights, but others in the tribe, led by the hot-tempered Ki-Yote, want to provoke a more violent confrontation.

Peter Olsen, a young social outcast who lives alone on a rundown farm and raises vegetables for a living, finds his only consolation in liquor, though Dorcas Chatham, daughter of the general store owner, begs him to forego this indulgence. Returning from town, he finds a dog by the roadside, apparently injured by a car, and takes it home. Later, on a drunken spree, Peter is attacked by robbers, but the dog comes to his rescue and frightens the assailants away. Stirred by the unselfish devotion of his dog, Peter gradually regains his self-respect, and Dorcas falls in love with him and accepts his proposal, though she fears the dog. When Peter enters the dog in a show, another exhibitor proves to be its owner, and Peter is first parted from, then reunited with, "his" dog. Dorcas overcomes her fear and is united with Peter.

The exploits of Brigadier Gerard who helps expose Foreign Minister Talleyrand as a traitor to Napoleon.

Directed by Erle C. Kenton. With Vera Reynolds, Harrison Ford, John Patrick, Sally Rand.

Montero, son of a Gypsy leader, is about to take a bride according to primitive ritual, when the Duke de la Garda demands his right as feudal lord--to take the bride to his castle for a night. Rather than accede to the duke's advances, the girl chooses death by her own hand. Montero swears vengeance.....

A Woman Against the World is a 1928 American drama film directed by George Archainbaud and starring Harrison Ford, Georgia Hale, and Lee Moran.

An American soldier falls in love with a French maiden but their romance is thwarted when the Yanks return home. Years later she comes to America to put on a fashion show and find her long lost lover.

Billy Haven, a young rancher, accidentally discovers that clay found on his ranch will, when mixed with water, become the most beautifying mud-pack cosmetic that any young girl, or old woman, could desire. Then the land-grabbers, clay-speculators, cosmetic companies and a show girl or two show up to get a piece of the action.

Attorney Ken Walrick, not quite realizing the difference between a garter and a bracelet, gives Gertie Darling a bejewelled garter with his photograph in miniature attached. But then he must cover his indiscretion by getting the garter back before his fiancee finds out.

Process server Neal Burns raids a hospital to bring a reluctant doctor to trial.

A model in an expensive clothing shop quarrels with another model, and an expensive gown is ruined. In order to pay for it, she asks her father, an artist, for the money. In order to get the money, the father gets mixed up with art thieves

A race between a British clipper ship and an American ship of a new design will determine the right to transport Chinese tea.

Impoverished by the Civil War and eager to replenish his fortune in the West, Colonel Halliday, his wife, and his daughter, Beth, proceed toward Salina, Kansas by wagon train, at the persuasion of Tom Kirby, a government scout and Beth's fiancé. Although Bill Hickok, Tom's friend, and a company of cavalry are in charge, Pawnee Killer, chief of the Sioux, attacks the wagon train, and Halliday and his wife are killed. Bill rides to Salina for help and to deliver the news to Buffalo Bill Cody. Beth, now hostile to Kirby, joins the household of Lige Morris, a trader in Salina, and, at the suggestion of Bill, Kirby joins General Custer's scouting expedition.

Sunny sings in the streets to obtain funds for a country outing. A theatre owner hears her and takes her up. During a fishing trip Sunny is about to accept the theatre owner's proposal of marriage when his estranged wife turns up...

A stand-off of pride between two families. One family has a pyromaniac in it, while the other, a member of law enforcement. When a detective and friend are killed by the bad boy of the other family, the double-murder is avenged by the father.

Percy Ashfield is to marry Mary Bowman but her father objects. He objects because while the Bowmans and Percy and others with vested interest are all assembled in Ashfield's castle admiring the pearls that are to be Mary's wedding present, a girl rushes in carrying a baby and claiming the Percy is the baby's father, and her claims are supported by a doctor who follows her in adding that the girl is mentally deranged over Percy's faithfulness.

1928 Short Film