
Acting
Bull Montana
Born 1887-05-15 · Voghera, Lombardy, Italy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Lewis Montagna (born Luigi Montagna, May 16, 1887 – January 24, 1950), better known as Bull Montana, was an Italian-American professional wrestler and actor. Montagna was born on May 16, 1887 in Voghera, Italy and came to the United States as a child. He became a professional wrestler under the name of Bull Montana. He gravitated to films in 1917, appearing first in several of the vehicles of his close pal Douglas Fairbanks. In 1919 he appeared as a gruesome villain in Maurice Tourneur's masterpiece Victory alongside Lon Chaney. Numbered among his many friends was Abe "The Newsboy" Hollandersky, boxer, wrestler, and movie extra, who claimed Montagna offered to help him finance his 1930 autobiography. In the early 1920s Montana, as he was known, often wrestled with his friend Jack Dempsey prior to some of Dempsey's larger fights to help entertain the press and spectators. Montagna was usually cast as a thug, henchman or something not quite sympathetic, and sometimes not quite human (he was the apelike cave dweller in 1925's The Lost World opposite Wallace Beery as Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger). Tempering his on-screen brutishness with humor, Montana starred in his own series of two-reel comedies in the early 1920s, spoofing everyone from Robin Hood (Rob 'Em Good) to the Corsican Brothers (The Two Twins). He appeared in two Buster Keaton films including a role as a professional wrestler in the film Palooka from Paducah. He continued playing movie bits into the 1940s, notably as one of Buster Crabbe's antagonists in the 1936 series Flash Gordon. Like many mashed-face musclemen of the movies, Bull Montana is reputed to have been as gentle as a lamb in real life.
Acting credits
A comedy short directed by character Slim Summerville.
Hello, 'Frisco
1924
6.0A healthy outdoors-type follows the girl he loves to a resort for wealthy hypochondriacs. In order to prove to her and the other patients that their "illnesses" are all in their minds, he hatches a scheme to take them on a boat ride, then get them stranded in the wilderness, where he can show them that they can live without their pills, doctors and "cures".
Down to Earth
1917
6.7The first film adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic novel about a land where prehistoric creatures still roam.
The Lost World
1925
NRKingston Hollister admires Bernice Cleveland from afar. He asks Officer Callahan, the policeman on the beat, about her and mistakenly believes she is a lady's maid. So the wealthy Hollister disguises himself as the cop so he can meet her.
Brass Buttons
1919
6.4Disaster seems imminent when scientists discover that the planet Mongo is about to crash into Earth. Luckily, heroic young Flash Gordon is on hand to lead an investigative mission into outer space and onto the speedily approaching planet. There, he and his best girl, Dale, who is along for the ride, learn that Ming, the devious ruler of Mongo, has purposely put the planet on a collision course with Earth, and only Flash can stop him.
Flash Gordon
1936
6.9A down on his luck young man makes several attempts at committing suicide but fails them too. He then finds himself becoming more confident through a series of petty adventures, to such an extent that this becomes his undoing.
Hard Luck
1921
7.0Young Jim Hawkins is caught up with the pirate Long John Silver in search of the buried treasure of the buccaneer Captain Flint, in this adaptation of the classic novel by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Treasure Island
1920
6.1Ahmed, son of Diana and Sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan, falls in love with Yasmin, a dancing girl who fronts her father's gang of mountebanks. She and Ahmed meet secretly until one night when her father and the gang capture the son of the sheik, torture him, and hold him for ransom.
The Son of the Sheik
1926
9.0Angela 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...
Hollywood
1923
6.2Adaptation of Joseph Conrad novel about lust and violence on a South Seas Island.
Victory
1919
6.0On the way to his wedding the bride groom finds a nude, married woman in his car
Limousine Love
1928
10.0Ellie Byrne and Don Lane, chums, living in the poor section of a factory town, go away to make their fortunes. Ellie wishes to become a lady so that she can marry Preston Dutton, a society chap, and Don becoming infatuated with Stephanie Parrish, daughter of a wealthy man. Ellie becomes a leading actress and Don the author of her first play. Ellie refuses Dutton’s suit when she learns he is after her money, and Stephanie returns Don’s engagement ring. Ellie and Don go back to the factory town disillusioned. They realize that they love each other and in reality had not bettered themselves for someone else but for each other. A lost film.
Painted People
1924
9.0Jimmy Slocum, whose wealthy father continually pays his speeding fines and loses bets to him, wins a $1,000 bet with his father that Katherine Fowler, whom his father wants him to marry, does not love him. Jimmy then wins a $25,000 bet that he can keep from being arrested more than once in the coming year by getting a 12-month jail sentence for fighting in a bar, then sassing the judge.
Easy to Make Money
1919
10.0When a man's wife is accused of adultery, her insanely jealous husband gives her young son away to a traveling band of gypsies. Years later, when the son grows up, he sets out to prove that his mother wasn't guilty of adultery but was actually trying to help her sister-in-law escape the clutches of a blackmailer.
Jealous Husbands
1923
6.3A rich Easterner who has always wanted to live in "the Wild West" plans to move to a Western town. Unknown to him, the town's "wild" days are long gone and it is an orderly and civilized place now. The townsmen, not wanting to lose a rich potential resident, contrive to make over the town to suit the young man's fantasy.
Wild and Woolly
1917
6.4After being beaten to a story of scandal involving Countess Polasky, James W. Hornby assigns his son 24 hours to find an even more scandalous story about the countess. After spending the night in the wrong street looking for the wrong countess, he comes up with a plan: the butler will be seen in a comprimising situation with the countess, and then photographed. The countess, who is sick of reporters, has other ideas... Written by Paul L
On the Front Page
1926
6.4In this movie, Max Linder parodies the famous novel "The Three Musketeers".
The Three Must-Get-Theres
1922
7.0Doris May plays Fanchon Browne, a poor girl about to enter into a marriage of convenience with wealthy old Peter Armitage (Otis Harlan). When she falls in love with Armitage's handsome nephew Peter (Cullen Landis), Fanchon is in quite a quandary.
Gay and Devilish
1922
10.0Based on the Rupert Hughes novel, this film concerns the German atrocities committed in Belgium at the beginning of the Great War.
The Unpardonable Sin
1919
7.7Anna and Joe are newly married, playful and deeply in love. Joe is scraping by as cab driver in New York City during a period of corruption, mob control and violence between cab companies.
Big City
1937
10.0In the prologue Sharon Kimm and Mickey Reid are childhood friends in a tenement neighborhood but are separated when Sharon is placed in an orphanage. In the story we see Sharon as a young Hollywood star whose quick rise to fame leaves her self-centered, superficial, and a spendthrift. Ironically, the film that skyrocketed her to fame was written by Mickey. But her success is brief; and when it comes crashing to earth, Mickey is there to pick up the pieces.
The Skyrocket
1926
6.6A European prince is raised in America without knowing his true identity; he spends his time thrill-seeking, but his country needs him when a revolt threatens the crown.
His Majesty, the American
1919
10.0Helen Corning, a rich "Yankee" widow's daughter, antagonizes her Southern neighbors when she speeds in her roadster. After she causes Brett Page's stalled Ford to overturn, Helen rams Judge Carroll's wagon, upsetting his eggs which fly into his whiskers. Furious, the Judge sends Helen to jail for thirty days. Brett, taking advantage of the town's ancient law that allows townspeople to hire prisoners for twenty cents per day, takes the uncooperative Helen into his home to cook and clean.
In for Thirty Days
1919
5.5Jerry Martin quits his dull job as a bank clerk and falls in with a band of hobos. He takes on the guise of Bachelor, the "king of the market," and finds himself pursued by dangerous men who are after the real Bachelor. *Only fragments are known to exist. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2010.
He Comes Up Smiling
1918