Tom Powers

Cinema a century ago was a new, exciting and highly democratic form of entertainment. Picture houses nationwide offered a sociable, lively environment in which to relax and escape from the daily grind. With feature films still rare, the programme was an entertaining, ever-changing roster of short items with live musical accompaniment. 100 years on, this special compilation from the BFI National Archive recreates the glorious miscellany of comedies, dramas, travelogues and newsreels which would have constituted a typical night out in 1914. Our selection includes a comic short about a face-pulling competition, a sensational episode of The Perils of Pauline, scenes of Allied troops celebrating Christmas at the Front, and an early sighting of one of cinema’s greatest icons.

The growing ambition of Julius Caesar is a source of major concern to his close friend Brutus. Cassius persuades him to participate in his plot to assassinate Caesar but both have sorely underestimated Mark Antony.

A Justice of the Peace performed weddings a few days before his license was valid. A few years later five couples learn they have never been legally married.

A detective tries to prevent the assassination of President-elect Abraham Lincoln during a train ride headed for Washington in 1861.

A mysterious stranger crosses paths with an outlaw bank robber and a greedy rancher.

Four strangers board a plane and become fast friends, but a catastrophic crash leaves only one survivor. He then sets off on a journey to discover who these people were, but ultimately discovers the devastating truth about himself.

A nightclub singer and his partner escape mobsters by fleeing to Cuba with a beautiful heiress, who has inherited a haunted castle on an isolated island. The trio hunt for a hidden treasure and encounter a ghost, a zombie, and a mysterious killer...

Following the Civil War, brothers Dan and Neil Hammond return to Texas, where ambitious Dan turns to rustling and then shady land deals to build an empire. Being held for a murder, he's rescued from a lynch mob by Neil, now the Marshal, but they have an inevitable falling-out.

An outlaw woman helps one Arizona convict stop another with a Gatling gun.

When his ward seeks protection with rival cattleman John Stewart, embittered, jealous rancher Wick Campbell hires ten outlaws to help him seize power in the territory.

A scientist takes the brain of dead man and revives it via electrodes as it lays suspended in a tank of liquid. Soon, the brain grows to possess enormous psychic powers and inflicts its personality upon the doctor who saved it, creating a "Jekyll and Hyde" paradigm.

After his best friend and war buddy is mysteriously gunned down, Mike Hammer will stop at nothing to settle the score for the man who sacrificed a limb to save his own life during combat. Along the way, Hammer rides a fine line between gumshoe and a one-man jury, staying two-steps ahead of the law—and trying not to get bumped off in the process.

Jim Vesser and his team of railroading men try to build a rail line through a mountain pass, while a group of less scrupulous construction workers sabotages the entire operation in the hopes that they can get their tracks laid first and get the money from the railroad.

A posse's pursuit of bank robbers ends with loot missing and a sheriff (Broderick Crawford) wounded.

Prizewinning boxer Johnny Monterez is mad at the world, feeling persecuted because of his Mexican heritage. Worse yet, his right hand is damaged from years of fighting. Then Johnny falls in love with Pat O'Malley, his manager's pretty daughter, even though his best friend, Rick Gavery, is already besotted with her. Everything is on the line when Johnny, against Rick's wishes, agrees to a match with a fearsome opponent.

A team composed of an aerospace scientist, an ex-Air Force general, and an industrialist conceives an ambitious plan to land Americans on the moon. From their base in the Mojave Desert, they construct and successfully launch a spacecraft named "Luna" that contains a cargo of four astronauts. But a critical miscalculation of needed power to escape the moon's gravitational pull may put the astronauts' lives in danger.

Story of a girl who witnesses murder of notorious international jewel thief. Afraid that the gang will attack her, she flees to Paris.

Story follows the rise and subsequent fall of the notorious head of a New York crime family, who decides to testify against his pals in order to avoid being killed by his fellow cohorts.

Drummer Stanley Maxton moves to Los Angeles with dreams of opening his own jazz club, but falls in with a gangster and a nightclub dancer and ends up accused of her murder.

Professional killer Bus Crow is hired by cattlemen to eliminate squatters. When Marshal Sam Rochelle is sent to investigate, saloon owner Hallie has to be a reluctant witness.

Marc Hill is the attorney for Emmet Devrey, a real estate developer with a past, who is being blackmailed by his former partner Sam Baggett. When Sam's unfaithful wife Marge cooks up a scheme with her used car salesman lover Jeff Calder to bilk both Devrey and her alcoholic husband, Sam is killed and Devrey is accused of the crime. Mark is called to prove his employers innocence.

Joseph Cotten plays an assistant bank manager who steals $1,000,000 from the safe late on a Friday and then plans to flee to Brazil over the weekend.

A Cuban businessman's daughter elopes with a professor instead of marrying a banker's son.

Deaf boxer Paul Callan captures the interest of gold-digging blonde Sonya Bartow and retired fight manager 'Pop' Richardson. For a time, Sonya has the upper hand with Paul, but ultimately a rival appears in the shape of upper-crust reporter Ann Hollis. With a 3-way fight under way for influence over Paul, he takes matters into his own hands, but learns that getting what he wanted isn't necessarily a happy ending.

Story of how the Coast Guard trained to help win World War II.

An American Rancher takes a small herd of Brahma bulls to Brazil where he has sold them for a small fortune. There, he finds himself in the middle of a range war......and in love. His concern, who are really his friends and who are his enemies

Mike Martin becomes a deputy marshal and takes on a gang of cattle rustlers.

In a racially mixed American town, a five-year-old black girl falls unnoticed into a hidden, forgotten well on her way to school. Having nothing better to go on, the police follow up a report that the child was seen with a white stranger, and rumors run wild. Before hapless, innocent Claude Packard is even found, popular hysteria has him tried and convicted. But is he guilty?

Citizens of Fairview are outraged when they learn children from the "Patch", a squalid migrant camp on the outskirts of town, will soon be attending Fairview's school.

An insurance representative is seduced by a dissatisfied housewife into a scheme of insurance fraud and murder that arouses the suspicion of his colleague, a claims investigator.

A wounded outlaw finds unexpected mercy in the care of a rancher's daughter. The hope of love pulls him toward a different life until the law, and his violent past, close in on his new home. Now he must choose the kind of man he'll become.

Soon after a veteran returns from war, his cheating wife is found dead. He evades police in an attempt to find the real murderer.

On trial for murdering his girlfriend, philandering stockbroker Larry Ballentine takes the stand to claim his innocence and describe the actual, but improbable sounding, sequence of events that led to her death.

A cop investigates the shooting of another policeman... that may have been involved in crooked activities.

Two con men selling phony stock flee to Mexico ahead of the law, where they run into a woman friend from their earlier days, who is now a bullfighter.

When two US cavalrymen transporting a gold shipment get killed, US Army Intelligence investigator John Haven goes undercover to a mining and logging town to find the killers.

On Chicago's South Side reporter Ed Ames finds the body of a dead girl. Her address book leads to a host of names of men frightened by her death but claiming never to have known her. Ames comes to know quite a lot, dangerously so.

After leaving her family's farm to study nursing in the city, a young woman finds herself on an unexpected path towards politics.

Joe spends a lot of his time at Nick's Pacific Street Saloon. Tom, who credits Joe with once saving his life, stops by regularly to run errands for Joe. Today, Tom notices a woman named Kitty when she comes into Nick's, and he quickly falls in love with her. Meanwhile, a distraught young man repeatedly calls his girlfriend, begging her to marry him. Nick himself muses on all the various persons who come into his bar, some to ask for work and others just to pass the time.

A vain businessman puts strains on his happy marriage to a rich, beautiful socialite by allowing himself to be seduced by a former girlfriend.

A California railroad agent hunts two brothers for murder and robbing a payroll express.

A mystery grows after a bank robbery car leads investigators to a carnival sideshow.

In 1834, Charles Stewart (Alan Ladd), the spoiled, dissolute son of a shipping magnate, is shanghaied aboard the Pilgrim, one of his father's own ships. He embarks upon a long, hellish sea voyage under the tyrannical rule of Captain Francis Thompson (Howard Da Silva), assisted by his first mate, Amazeen (William Bendix). One of his crewmates is Richard Henry Dana Jr. (Brian Donlevy).

A wealthy man hires a private detective to investigate his wife's mysterious past.

In this screwball comedy a WW2 US pilot bombs a Japanese aircraft carrier, is assumed to be dead, and then is misquoted in the press as fondly remembering his days back home walking his dog Piggy. Instead of his dog Piggy he is thought to be in love with Peggy, a girl he worked with. The usual farce ensues after he returns home alive and tries to play along with the mistake to save embarrassment for all.

A young man who steals valuable Oriental objects for a crooked antique dealer is hunted down by the police after his latest Chinatown robbery turns violent.

The fourth film in Columbia's "Rusty" series is a lecture against gossiping. A young army veteran comes to town, and Danny and his friends learn that he had spent time in a military stockade for an infraction of a regulation. Danny's friends spread the story all over town. The seriousness of the minor infraction grows with each telling. As a sidebar, Rusty finds a mate and becomes a father.

An ex-convict on his way to make his fortune in a gold mine in Arizona has his trip interrupted when the residents of a small Mexican village believe him to be a sacred religious figure.

A newspaper reporter and the daughter of an immigrant maintenance man help expose political corruption in New York City.

The spirit of an executed murderer enters the body of a physician, and forces him to do its bidding--namely, murder.

Danny Mitchell, feeling that he has been misunderstood by his parents, takes his dog, Rusty, and leaves home, camping out near the trailer of veterinary Dr. Francis Xavier Ray. Gas escapes in the trailer during the night, and Rusty rescues the vet before he is overcome.

Although not the first feature-length animated film, as is sometimes thought, it was the first cartoon to feature a character with an appealing personality. The appearance of a true character distinguished it from earlier animated "trick films", such as those of Blackton and Cohl, and makes it the predecessor to later popular cartoons such as those by Walt Disney. The film was also the first to be created using keyframe animation.

A Western drama in which a gang steals John’s horse and then kidnaps Polly when she tries to warn the new buyer.

Peter Barton leaves his wealth to his niece, Mary, disinheriting his dissipated son, Edgar, who steals the will. Jack Smart, a rascal, an associate of Edgar's, keeps close watch upon him. At the point of a revolver he compels Edgar to surrender the will to him. Mary, the niece, is obliged to go to work, takes a position as a reporter, and meets Tom Swayne, who falls in love with her. Tom sees Jack Smart in a restaurant, and after the villain leaves, Tom picks up a menu card, upon which Smart has written some hieroglyphics. Mary shows him an envelope which she picked up in her uncle's room, where Smart took the will from Edgar, after he had stolen it. Tom compares it and the hieroglyphics on it with those on the menu card. They are the same.

Garment manufacturer Sergius cuts his workers' wages, prompting a protest led by two Russian sisters, Olga and Vera. Sergius's affluent daughters, Hattie and Helen, decide to support the workers' cause, moving into the sisters' tenement and joining the workforce, much to their father's dismay. In a dramatic turn, the daughters bring their work to the factory and confront Sergius. They make a final appeal to him in his office, where he eventually relents and agrees to meet the workers' demands. Following this victory, Hattie and Helen decide to return home to their father, and the good news is shared with all the factory girls, ending the story on a note of general rejoicing.

A drama about a poor composer who is betrayed by his family and left alone.

A mountaineer, who has been shot by a pursuing sheriff, is concealed by a mountain girl in her cabin. When the sheriff arrives, she gives him whiskey, while secretly removing the bullets from his gun.

This domestic comedy depicts a woman who stops her husband's gambling habit by having her cousin stage a fake police raid on the weekly poker game.

Employed as secretary to Howard Abele, Marjorie Abbott attracts the attention of Sydney, her employer's son, who falls desperately in love with her. Mr. Abele is strenuously opposed to their marriage and he quarrels with his son. Marjorie has a half-brother, Dave, who is of an inventive turn of mind.

Dolly Dillard jumps at the conclusion that George Gordon is playing her false, as he affectionately greets his sister at the train when she comes to pay him a visit. Dolly, who is not acquainted with his sister, sends back her engagement ring. Sad and disconsolate, she saunters to the cliffs overlooking the seashore, trying to forget her imagined wrong. As she is climbing down the side of the rocky prominence, her foot slips and she falls into a narrow crevice. She finds herself helpless with a sprained ankle. Remembering George's returned match-case, she tears a piece of cloth from her skirt; writes with a burnt match a note, telling of her accident. She ties it around her shoe and throws it over the cliff to her collie dog Jean, who carries the missive to George, who at once, after summoning aid, goes to her rescue, accompanied by his sister.