Ford Sterling

In this one-hour special taped between March 9-17, 1981, Lily Tomlin and Dudley Moore join the Muppets in a tribute to film classics. Kermit the Frog hosts the program, which begins with an all-cast rendition of "Hey a Movie!" from The Great Muppet Caper.

An appreciative, uncritical look at silent film comedies and thrillers from early in the century through the 1920s.

A compilation featuring comedic stars of the silent era including Will Rogers, Laurel and Hardy, and the Keystone Cops.

In Victorian England, a bored young girl dreams that she has entered a fantasy world called Wonderland, populated by even more fantastic characters.

A police detective's (Norman Foster) lawyer girlfriend (Judith Allen) works for a crooked criminal lawyer (Sidney Blackmer).

Broadway actress leaves New York to become a star in Hollywood, and succeeds despite sleazy directors and her own ego.

The wealthy von Wellingens are shocked when the father of their son Fred's fiancée Lia juggles desserts at a formal dinner. They encourage Fred to break the engagement. Lia goes to Berlin to marry a Baron von Schwarzdorf, and Fred goes to stop the marriage.

Hajj, a rascally beggar on the periphery of the court of Baghdad, schemes to marry his daughter to royalty and to win the heart of the queen of the castle himself. This film is believed lost.

Stout Hearts and Willing Hands is a 1931 short comedy film directed by Bryan Foy. It was nominated for an Academy Award in 1932 for Best Short Subject (Comedy), but was disqualified.

Another hotel-room mix-up with the suspicious wife, Grace King (Josephine Whittell), checking up on her husband, Ford King (Ford Sterling),who is trying to sell his jewelry line to a lady buyer, Frances Brown (Kitty McHugh). The house detective (Edgar Dearing) gets involved and the room-service waiter, (Billy Dooley), constantly gets himself and his tray knocked over.

When the daughter of a newspaper publisher is falsely charged with murder, a reporter on her father's paper goes into hiding with her. At first hoping to get an exclusive story, the reporter eventually finds himself falling in love and trying to find the real killer.

As they are leaving the church following their wedding, Count Adrian Beltrami and Countess Anna-Marie are told that the Austrians are marching on the town to quell an Italian uprising. The bride and relatives induce the count to flee to his castle, but Tangy, a silhouette cutter, brings word from the revolutionary committee asking him to return; the count goes, asking Tangy to pose as the count and protect Anna-Marie.

Ford Sterling is married to a very jealous wife, who has a hobby of collecting French dolls. In order to keep her appeased and unsuspecting. he buys her an expensive doll for her birthday. But before he can give it to her, he gets mixed up with the blonde at the cigar-store, the doll gets burned up, and his wife is also burned up about many things.

After a baron steals his scientific discoveries, runs away with his wife, and slaps him in public, a man joins a Parisian circus sideshow as a clown whose act consists of being slapped repeatedly and becomes infatuated with a showgirl colleague whose father intends to marry her off to the baron.

Casey is a slovenly junk man in a turn of the twentieth century hick town who has a remarkable ability to play baseball. An unscrupulous New York scout signs him up, so Casey and his equally dishonest manager go to the big leagues. Eventually, the scout and manager conspire to get him drunk and bet against him for a crucial game with the pennant at stake.

John Curry is a friend of the Navajos who fails in his attempts to keep the white man from exploiting the tribe's secret altars. Realizing that there is oil to be found on the reservation, evil Will Newton gains entry to the area by posing as a trail guide for Elias Manton, an archeologist, and his daughter Mary.

Ben Turpin's rival marries his college sweetheart played by Phyllis Haver.

A newspaper publisher finds out that his wild daughter has fallen in with a ring of gamblers. A reporter who has infiltrated the gang to get a story falls in love with the gang's female leader, and when the two are caught in a police raid, they find themselves in equal amounts of trouble.

Jane Maynard opens a mission in memory of philanthropist Bland Hendricks. John Anstell, son of a powerful and selfish millionaire, Michael Anstell, falls in love with Jane, to the old man's disapproval. Anstell tries to undermine Jane's work by hiring reporter Tom Barnett to write an unfavorable story about the mission.

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...

William Hyatt (Tom Moore) runs an exclusive shoe store, and his happy marriage to Grace (Florence Vidor) is nearly derailed by his well-meaning, but hopelessly gauche pal, Al Hennessy (Sterling). Dagmar, a Parisian shoe designer (Esther Ralston) has come to town to meet with Hyatt and Hennessy, and Hennessy describes the situation to Grace in the worst possible manner, convincing her that her husband is having an affair.

A young married couple appears before a judge to get a divorce. The wife shows the judge some pictures of her husband with his arms around another woman, as "proof" that he was cheating on her. The husband, for his part, claims that he was just innocently helping the woman and that he was being blackmailed by the photographer who took the picture.

Julian (Percy Marmont) is a poor artist who lives with wife Edith (Alice Joyce) and their newborn baby in Harlem. Struggling to make ends meet, he foregoes his artistic calling and draws for magazines. Reaching his limits, Julian convinces his wife he could reach higher grounds if he were to go to Paris. He moves to Paris while his Edith works at a shop on Fifth Avenue. Each of their lives evolves differently—Edith is courted by a wealthy suitor whom she ignores while pining for her husband, while Julian fails to meet his goals in Paris, returning defeated three years later. The meeting highlight how different their routes have been.

In this drama, a traveling troupe of actors find themselves in danger of becoming unemployed when their manager up and leaves. Two of the actors decide to marry and settle down. The lead actor helps set up the rest of the troupe with some performances. He then destroys the new marriage. Later the woman and the head actor fall in love. He then gives her the lead role in his newest show.

After graduating from a fashionable finishing school and touring Europe with her father, Selina Peake returns to the United States, where her father is accidentally killed after losing his fortune in a gambling den. Selina is reduced to teaching in a high school in the Dutch community at High Prarie near Chicago. She boards in the farmhouse of Klass Poole, a dull-witted market gardener, and finally marries Pervus DeJong, a poor and backward farmer. She shares the drudgery of her husband's futile life and finds happiness only in their small son, Dirk, whom she calls "So-Big."

Figures Don't Lie is a showcase for the physical charms of lovely Esther Ralston, who in one scene proves the accuracy of the title by donning a fetching one-piece bathing suit. The main story concerns wise-guy insurance salesman Richard Arlen, who through a combination of hard work and sheer gall lands a job as sales manager. But he can't land heroine Ralston, who has remained cool to his charms ever since he tried to make a play for her on the street. A lost film.

Based on the novel The Spoilers by Rex Beach.

Horace Ventimore, a young London architect, stumbles across an old brass bottle. When he picks it up a genie suddenly appears and promises Horace that he will grant every wish Horace wants in exchange for his freedom. Horace accepts the genie's offer but finds out that things aren't working out quite as well as he thought they would.

On the eve of her wedding Lady Kay Rutfield runs off aboard her sloop. A storm carries her out to sea and she is rescued by a passing rumrunner bound for the Long Island Sound. Once they arrive in the States, Kay makes her escape and hides in the deserted mansion of Jimmy Winter. Jimmy is due to marry the following day. He comes home to the mansion unexpectedly, and finds Kay, who persuades him to let her pose for a night as his wife.

In managing the shipyard inherited from her father, Derith Keogh has considerable labor problems and accedes to the unreasonable demands of John Trevelyan, an anarchist labor agitator. Derith's brother John is off in pursuit of an adventuress, and Angus Campbell, her superintendent, resigns in exasperation. Angus returns, however, to help Derith persuade Trevelyan to settle a strike, which Trevelyan accomplishes in spite of being shot by one of his own men.

Three men join forces to raise an adopted son. A lost film.

On the day of her wedding to Paul, Mary Wheeler is given the deed to a mysterious old house that is occupied by a strange housekeeper named Nancy Crowl. Sometime later, Marc Reed, one of Mary's former suitors, arrives at the house and refuses to leave. When Marc is murdered, Mary is arrested for the crime.

The story of a woman on trial for her life for shooting the man who had promised to love her but had deserted her...and of a woman on the jury who refused to condemn her when eleven men had voted guilty...a woman brave enough to defy public opinion, brave enough to lose the loss of the love of her husband by baring her soul to the world in order to save the girl on trial.

Polly Brewster, a penniless Hollywood model/movie extra inherits one million dollars. But her new lawyer, Tom Hancock, informs her that she has to spend it all within 30 days to inherit $5 million more from her spiteful Uncle Ned Brewster who tries to prevent it from happening.

Stationed in Switzerland after the Great War, soldiers Louis Hozenozzle and Rodney Ramsbottom both fall in love with local damsel Colette, much to the dismay of Colette's self-appointed boyfriend, General Lavoris. When Lavoris issues a fake order that all unmarried women must immediately take husbands, Hozenozzle weds Colette, at her request, to "save" her for the absent Ramsbottom. A lost film.

A married tightwad learns to loosen up by living the life of a playboy.

A lost film - Mary Gray, whose father manufactures cold cream, is engaged to sappy Horace Niles, the son of Hugo Niles, the elder Gray's most competitive rival in the cosmetics business. Chip Armstrong, a hot-shot public relations man, quits the employ of Hugo Niles and goes to work for Gray, persuading Mary to enter the Miss America contest at Atlantic City, with the intention of using her to endorse her father's cold cream should she win. Mary breaks her engagement with Horace. When it appears that she will win the contest, Hugo lures her home on the pretext that her father is ill, and she misses the contest. Chip and Mary return to Atlantic City, discovering that the new Miss America has told the world that she owes all her success to Gray's cold cream. On this note, Chip and Mary decide to get married.

Daydreaming waitress Jennie Hagen fantasizes about becoming a famous actress, while in reality she and her cook boyfriend, Orme Wilson, hope to one day own their own diner. Although Orme loves Jennie, he also has a weakness for stage stars -- so when a riverboat theatrical crew comes to their town, he is smitten by lead actress Lillian Lyons. Desperate to keep Orme, Jennie insists on going onstage to best Lillian, but is soon out of her depth.

Gold digging blonde Lorelei and her brunette friend Dorothy are searching for rich husbands. This film is believed lost.

Hugh Whittaker believes he is terminally ill, and, as an act of mercy, weds a young woman named Mary, who has been deserted by her lover. He travels to Europe, recovers his health, and returns to New York City, where he meets and falls in love with musical star Sara Law, unaware that she is actually his wife. Sara is abducted by kidnappers and Hugh undertakes a harrowing rescue before discovering her true identity.

Millie Stope lives with her grandfather on a remote island. Man-child Nicholas, a fugitive from justice, also lives there and is terrorizing them - and he's interested in Millie. One day widower John Woolfolk, sailing on his yacht, happens upon the island. Soon he and Millie fall in love. Will jealous Nicholas stand for this?

To show his girl how brave he is, Pug challenges the champion to a fight. Charlie referees, trying to avoid contact with the two monsters.

This short was a promo piece for Mack Sennett's Yankee Doodle in Berlin

In a dance hall, two members of the orchestra and a tipsy dancer fight over the hat check girl.

A young man falls in love with his mother's kitchen maid, Mabel. But his mother objects strongly, and arranges for him to meet another young woman whom she considers more suitable. Mabel confronts the young woman, and is dismissed from her position. Later, when the young man learns about the new career that Mabel has found, he begins to act in an agitated and unpredictable manner.

Wine is a 1913 movie starring Roscoe Arbuckle and Ford Sterling.

Charles Murray out romancing in the park.

Two criminals chase a plainclothes policeman who, while taking out his dog, witnesses their crime.

This early Keystone has Pete spying on his neighbor's wife through one of those little knotholes in a fence. The neighbor (Sterling) notices and chases him all over town with sheriff and family close behind. Fatty Arbuckle plays the peeper's wife(!).

Behind enemy lines, Captain Bob White disguises himself as a woman in order to fool members of the German High Command, including the Kaiser himself.

A new electric chair has been installed in the prison, and the officials impatiently await the first execution. The victim, with careless disregard for their feelings, makes his escape from the prison. The sleuth goes in pursuit, and finding the discarded convict's garb dons it as a disguise, hoping to meet the hunted man and ingratiate himself. Prison guards capture the sleuth, and disliking to disappoint the waiting crowd, decide to execute him. He is placed in the chair and the current turned on, but he stubbornly resists death. The current is doubled and trebled, to no avail. Meanwhile the real criminal has been captured, and he is brought back in time to save the sleuth from his perilous position.

A happy young couple become engaged, and soon afterwards they are married. But after their marriage, the husband begins to stay out carousing with his friends, leaving his wife at home with her mother. Then, when the three of them go to the opera together, the husband spots one of his friends in another box. Soon the domestic difficulties reach their peak.

Baffles, Gentleman Burglar

A short silent comedy starring Mabel Normand and Ford Sterling.

Mr. Snookie steals an umbrella and then, while trying to help a woman to cross a puddle, the Tramp appears and intervenes.

His Sister's Kids is a 1913 movie starring Roscoe Arbuckle and Minta Durfee.

When Mabel romantically rejects a villain, he ties her to the railroad tracks, leaving her bashful suitor to appeal to famous racecar driver Barney Oldfield for help.

A presumably lost film starring Mabel Normand and Roscoe Arbuckle.

The minister is appointed head of a purity league designed to keep a risque dancer from performing her act; however, the deacon becomes infatuated with the girl at an amusement park and has his picture taken with her, which causes much scandal and blackmail.

A husband who has spent a convivial night is sleeping off the effects in bed while his devoted wife ministers for him.