Betty Compson

Among the pieces featured in Fragments are the final reel of John Ford's The Village Blacksmith (1922) and a glimpse at Emil Jannings in The Way of All Flesh (1927), the only Oscar®-winning performance in a lost film. Fragments also features clips from such lost films as Cleopatra (1917), starring Theda Bara; The Miracle Man (1919), with Lon Chaney; He Comes Up Smiling (1918), starring Douglas Fairbanks; an early lost sound film, Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929), filmed in early Technicolor, and the only color footage of silent star Clara Bow, Red Hair (1928). The program is rounded out with interviews of film preservationists involved in identifying and restoring these films. Also featured is a new interview with Diana Serra Cary, best known as "Baby Peggy", one of the major American child stars of the silent era, who discusses one of the featured fragments, Darling of New York (1923).

1991's NBC Halloween special with John Astin and Rhonda Shear. Features clips from classic horror movies with commentary.

Period music, film clips and newsreel footage combined into a visual exploration of the American entertainment industry during the Great Depression.

Happily married for three years, Ann and David Smith live in New York. One morning Ann asks David if he had to do it over again, would he marry her? To her shock, he answers, "No". Later that day, they separately discover that, due to a legal complication, they are not legally married.

Convicts escaping from Devil's Island come under the influence of a strange Christ-like figure.

On the eve of his execution, a vice-rackets bigshot recalls his various exploits in crimes such as abortion and white slavery, in which he frequently operated under an alias.

While on their honeymoon, a reporter and his new bride stumble upon a ring of fifth columnists.

A dancehall girl meets a sailor and they fall in love, but the club’s owner doesn’t want the girl to leave.

The town's leading citizen becomes a homicidal maniac after his wife deserts him.

A rich society mother hires a male escort, but he falls for her daughter instead. The mother-daughter conflict forces the daughter to run off to stay with a friend who is enslaved by a prostitution ring.

A blundering rookie reporter runs into some unexpected difficulty when he is assigned to cover the police beat.

Three women inherit a 10-ton truck and decide to go into business. Hi jinks ensue.

The House That Shadows Built (1931) is a short feature, roughly 48 minutes long, from Paramount Pictures made to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the studio's founding in 1912. It was a promotional film for exhibitors and never had a regular theatrical release and includes a brief history of Paramount, interviews with various actors, and clips from upcoming projects (some of which never came to fruition). The title comes from a biography of Paramount founder Adolph Zukor, The House That Shadows Built (1928), by William Henry Irwin.

Ruth Payne, innocent to begin with, is trying to extradite herself from the clutches of a gang-mob who obtained her release from prison on a falsified confession because they thought she knew something they didn't want known.

Torchy, Steve, and Gahagan are on the trail of a bank robber aboard an ocean liner traveling from New York to L.A. via the Panama Canal.

Former bootlegger Remy Marco has a slight problem with foreclosing bankers, a prospective son-in-law, and four hard-to-explain corpses.

When a rich young man marries, he lets the books and letters left him by his dead mother guide his life.

This film earned an Oscar nomination for Sound Recording. It is the only film nominated in this category that is among the lost. No negative or print material is known to have survived. Contemporary reviews were scathing, describing the film as a vastly overlong and boring talk-fest.

It is the fate of a small frontier town, adjoining the no-man's-land where the Russians and Austrians are fighting out one of the final campaigns of World War I, to be occupied one day by the Russians, the next by the Austrians, and the inhabitants soon acquire a complacent view of the changing allegiances. To the town comes Ann Warschaska, intent on avenging the suicide of her sister, who has killed herself after being betrayed by an Austrian officer. She knows no more about his identity than the number of his room at the "Hotel Imperial".

With a full Hollywood background and settings but more an expose of scandal-and-gossip magazines of the era, has-been actor John Blakeford agrees to write his memoirs for magazine-publisher Jordan Winston. When Blakeford's daughter, Patricia, ask him to desist for the sake of his ex-wife, Carlotta Blakeford, he attempts to break his contract with Winston.

Director Karl Brown's 1938 circus drama stars Marjorie Main as a tough, fur-coat-wearing circus boss who raises her orphaned niece to be a trapeze star.

A wealthy young woman, racked with guilt because she wasn't there when her mother died, is so desperate to contact her that she gets involved with a phony mystic who promises to put her in touch with her mother's spirit, but who is really after her money. A reporter who loves the young woman sets out to expose the phony "psychic" for the charlatan he is.

A fog-shrouded house provides the setting for a weekend party prank gone wrong and the resulting murder being blamed on an innocent man.

Cowboys from Texas is a 1939 American Western "Three Mesquiteers" B-movie directed by George Sherman.Texas has opened up land for homesteaders. Clay Allison wants their land and has his men led by Plummer try to start a range war between them and the ranchers. With each side suspecting the other of their problems, the Mesquiteers realize someone else is responsible. Stony suspects Plummer and fakes leaving the Mesquiteers to join Plummer's gang hoping to find out who it is.

A girl who's just lost her job meets a drunk millionaire on a bridge who's just lost his money. They go back to his house, and eventually come up with a plan to benefit them both: he'll scrounge enough money together to teach her how to be a lady, and then introduce her to his rich friends so she can snag a husband, after which she'll pay him a finder's fee. Complications ensue.

Newspaper editor (Foster) will do almost anything to increase circulation. He campaigns to free a condemned man while accusing a wealthy ex-criminal of a string of murders.

Martin Granville Jr., a star track-and-field athlete, has intentions of going to Claxton College, but changes his mind when he meets Pat Meredith, a co-ed at a rival college, changes his mind team and goes to college there, just as his father Martin Granville Sr., an alum of the school, had wished. But his father has ordered him not to play football. "Dad" Granville, has offered a $100,000 endowment to his old school, not knowing his son has joined the football team, but is going to withdraw it if his son plays in the Big Game against Claxton.

Nightclub singer Della Mason witnesses a murder and is forced by the killer to flee with him from the scene of the crime. Escaping from the gangster, she secretly boards the ship of Captain Josiah Storm, a woman-hater, and the ship sails from San Francisco headed for China. Della is discovered by Jim Benton, the ship's first mate and he pleads her case to the captain. He leaves her in under the protection of Minnie at "Minnie's Joint in Shanghai, until her innocence can be established.

Roberta Morgan is being raised in a wealthy home where her mother is occupied with her society-club activities and her father is immersed in his business activities. She also feels that the household staff is against her and that no one understands her needs and problems. Things spiral out of control.

A jealous trapeze star decides he must eliminate his romantic rival.

Cowboy and his friends set out to track down his father's killer. On the way, they discover a vein of gold. The killer finds out about it, and returns to try to take it from them.

A group of people are stuck on a schooner in the middle of the Pacific with no wind.

The Millionaire Kid is young Tommy Neville whose wealthy parents, Thomas and Gloria Neville are preparing to fight it out in divorce court.Tommy runs away from home. The private detective assigned to watch him tells Mrs. Neville he has been kidnapped. She immediately suspects her husband. Meanwhile, Tommy is selling newspapers in another city. He is attacked by a bully, and is rescued by gangster Terry Mallon and his daughter Kitty. Unaware of his identity, they take him to their beach home. Reporter Breezy Benson is sent to interview Mrs. Neville about the divorce, and is fired when she won't talk to him. He meets Kitty at the beach and is intrigued by her. He meets her father, who is curious but not suspicious as news of the alleged kidnapping has not been reported.

On a South Sea island, Stella operates a hotel for her mother, who is constantly drunk on liquor smuggled by Shane, the principal trader and virtual dictator of the island. Dave Wade, exhausted from the heat, lands on the shore near the hotel and reports having escaped from a nearby cannibal island. Stella has her servants, Manua and Loru, care for him, but Shane, to whom she is married but with whom she has never lived, orders him taken to his house, intent on stealing his gold. In a drunken orgy, Shane takes the gold, provoking a fight in which Stella aids Wade. When Ma Blackney dies and Stella recovers the gold, she suggests they go to another island and establish a trading business; but because of a misunderstanding, Stella is kidnaped by the natives and taken to the cannibal island. Disregarding their differences, Wade and Shane join forces and go to the island; Shane sacrifices himself to stall the cannibals while Stella and Wade flee to the sea.

A playboy takes a job as an assistant district attorney, finds himself up against a tough crime boss and his gang.

Two rival newspapers are engaged in a circulation battle, complicated by the fact that a vicious gangster inserts himself into the middle of it. Also complicating matters is that one newspaper's editor and circulation director are competing for the affections of a pretty blonde reporter.

A policeman doubles as a gunman to get in with the mob.

A women in prison tale. One's rich, one's poor. Can they prosper after prison?

A blue-collar worker on New York's depressed waterfront finds his life changed after he saves a woman attempting suicide.

Now hear this. The studio that gave the cinema its voice offered 1929 audiences a chance to see and hear multiple silent-screen favorites for the first time in a gaudy, grandiose music-comedy-novelty revue that also included Talkie stars, Broadway luminaries and of course, Rin-Tin-Tin. Frank Fay hosts a jamboree that, among its 70+ stars, features bicyclers, boxing champ Georges Carpentier, chorines in terpsichore kickery, sister acts, Myrna Loy in two-strip Technicolor as an exotic Far East beauty, John Barrymore in a Shakespearean soliloquy (adding an on-screen voice to his legendary profile for the first time) and Winnie Lightner famously warbling the joys of Singing in the Bathtub. Watch, rinse, repeat!

Berenice Arnold spends her time trying to keep her family happy. This is easier said than done -- her brother, Jimmy, is a gambler and he steals 80 dollars that his father was responsible for. Berenice sets out to get the money back, but winds up causing a scandal because of her association with Trix Ulner, a gambler and thief.

Skin Deep is a 1929 American talking drama film directed by Ray Enright and starring Monte Blue. It was produced and distributed by the Warner Brothers. It was also released in the U.S. in a silent version for theaters not equipped yet with sound. The film is a remake of a 1922 Associated First National silent film of the same name directed by Lambert Hillyer and starring Milton Sills. All copies of this film are now lost. However, the Vitaphone soundtrack, of music and effects, survive.

In Old Vienna in the days prior to The Great War, a beautiful woman, Hannerl, has her choice of two men; the first is a dashing young army officer who can provide blazing romance and little long-time security. The other is an older man, influential in the affairs of Austria, who could provide wealth...and tender devotion. Hannerl thinks about it.

A successful carnival barker deals with the arrival of his eager son, who he'd hoped would stay far from the carnival world, his son's entanglement with a showgirl, and his own jealous mistress.

Angela comes to Hollywood with only two things: Her dream to become a movie star, and Grandpa. She leaves an Aunt, a brother, Grandma, and her longtime boyfriend back in Centerville. Despite seeing major movie stars around every corner, and knocking on every casting office door in town, at the end of her first day she is still unemployed. To her horror, when she arrives back at their hotel, she finds that Grandpa has been cast in a movie by William DeMille and quickly becomes a star during the ensuing weeks. Her family, worried that Angela and Grandpa are getting into trouble, come to Hollywood to drag them back home. In short order Aunt, Grandma, brother, boyfriend and even the parrot become superstars, but Angela is still unemployed...

A musical comedy that follows the progress of a college All America football player whose swollen head is deflated when, after graduating , he takes a job as a Wall Street stock salesman. While poor at selling, he knows how to charm women and his boss has him concentrate his efforts on disposing of bad stock to gullible females, one of whom turns out to be the wife of his boss. The film is considered lost, with only its soundtrack remaining.

Temptations of a Shop Girl is a lost 1927 silent crime drama film directed by Tom Terriss and starring Betty Compson and Pauline Garon

Eve's Secret is that she's not the elegant society woman she seems to be. In fact, Eve is an unkempt country girl who's been "transformed," Pygmalion style, by European duke Poltava.

This dramatic adventure finds the flirtatious Cherry O'Day as the daughter of the Shanghai saloon keeper Terrence. She works in the dive and entertains the patrons, sending them away after they cease to amuse her. Cherry falls for Gordon Deane, the American writer and adventurer who barely notices her.

The Masked Angel is a 1928 silent romantic drama film directed by Frank O'Connor.

Although Margaret and Julian Rolfe are deeply in love, Rolfe has a bit of a past. At one time he had befriended Clara Foster, a woman of the streets. When he discovers that his ward Phil Long is about to wed Clara, he tries to stop him. But he finds that Long and Clara have already married, so he heads back home. When Phil is found murdered, Rolfe is arrested and tried for the crime.

Documentary short film depicting the filmmaking activity at the Paramount Studios in Hollywood, featuring dozens of stars captured candidly and at work.

Olympe is a cabaret dancer who offers her services to France when her country goes to war. She becomes a spy and provides valuable intelligence information during World War I by winning the confidence of a German officer. Hugh Warren is the American soldier who falls for Olympe. She allows him to believe she is a simple peasant and reveals nothing of her career as a spy. The two fall in love and are married, but the villainous German agent De Montinrich reveals to her husband's family that she is a tawdry club dancer. Unable to reveal her role in espionage, Olympe is ostracized by her friends and family. When the French government honors Olympe for her wartime bravery, her family no longer considers her a blemish on their sterling reputation.

A sea captain comes to rescue of a prostitute in Shanghai, who is being run out of town. He takes her aboard his ship and heads out to sea. Not long afterwards the ship sinks but the pair manage to get into a lifeboat before it goes under. They are later picked up by a passing ship, but it turns out that the crew had just mutinied against their captain and taken over the ship.

Typhus specialist Dr. David West has fought long and hard for the construction of the new municipal waterworks. Harrison Blake, the town's leading lawyer and banker, conspires to have the waterworks put into private hands and frames David for accepting a bribe. As none of the town's lawyers will take the case, Katherine, David's daughter and a recent law school graduate, accepts her first client in her father. However, the circumstantial evidence is too great and David is convicted. Harrison bribes a worker to sabotage the waterworks, causing a public clamor for their takeover by private interests. Katherine, with the aid of newspaper editor Arnold Bruce, uncovers the conspiracy after the outbreak of a typhus epidemic. David is freed, and Katherine weds Arnold.

Madame Adele, once a great star of the Paris theatre, has fallen upon hard times. But she allows a young American performer, Marie Duval, to perform as the Madame Adele of old, and both become the darlings of Paris, one again and the other newly-crowned.

With unpaid actors and staff, the stage show Phantom Sweetheart seems doomed. To complicate matters, the box office takings have been robbed and the leading lady refuses to appear. Can the show be saved?

Lola de Breze loves Lord Arthur Fallaray from afar, though there seems to be no way to bring them together -- he is England's Colonial Secretary and married, while she is merely a working class maiden. But when she is given a maid's position in his household, it brings her that much closer to her idol. She puts on a fancy gown and heads to the Ritz in hopes of getting a formal introduction. After being fired from the household, she follows Fallaray to his country home and nurses him when he falls ill. Lord Fallaray's wife Lady Feo doesn't love him and is having an affair with Paul Chalfont. When it looks like he will be faced with scandal, Fallaray contemplates giving up politics and marrying Lola.

1919 Western serial.

Try & Helpus are two junk dealers, who have to raise five hundred to pay the rent which the villainous landlord demands. Various times the five hundred is placed in their hands but Always it is removed therefrom by a grouchy policeman.