Marie Dressler

The story of how Norma Jeane Mortenson became Marilyn Monroe (1926-62), a lucid path of self-discovery, from anonymity to stardom: the painful birth of a myth.

A compilation of thirteen rare silent films digitized by the Library of Congress, selected for the 2022 Domitor conference theme “Copy/Rights and Early Cinema.” Drawn from nitrate and safety film, the program spans comedies, trick films, and dramas exploring censorship, invention, adaptation, and social rights. Titles include: Pruning the Movies (Nestor, 1914); Imperial Japanese Dance (Edison, 1894); Early Edison Camera Tests (Edison, c.1890s); Censorship and its Absurdities (Edison, 1915); In Wrong (Crystal, 1914, dir. Phillips Smalley); Tillie’s Tomato Surprise (Lubin, 1915, dir. Howell Hansell); Indian Land Grab (Champion, 1910); The Stolen Play (Falcon Features, 1917, dir. Harry Harvey); And the Villain Still Pursued Her (Vitagraph, 1906, dir. J. Stuart Blackton); The Doll’s Revenge (Hepworth, 1907, dir. Lewin Fitzhamon); The Disintegrated Convict (Vitagraph, 1907); The Mexican Joan of Arc (Kalem, 1911, dir. Kenean Buel); and Fads and Fashions of 1900 (U.S., 1940s).

Some of MGM's musical stars review the studio's history of musicals. From The Hollywood Revue of 1929 to Brigadoon, from the first musical talkies to Gene Kelly in Singin' in the Rain.

Rare footage reveals how stars were created and motion pictures sold, and how the the advent of sound and color changed movies.

Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire present more golden moments from the MGM film library, this time including comedy and drama as well as classic musical numbers.

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

A documentary about the glorious history of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios and its decline leading to the sale of its back lot and props. By extension this provides a general history of Hollywood's Golden Age and the legendary studio system.

Here you will see Marie Dressler, Mary Pickford, Norma Shearer, Walter Huston and a host of other Canadians who achieved world renown on the silver screen. Slapstick, romance, tragedy, comedy--it's all here in an entertaining sampling of what audiences have applauded down the years. You see the audiences too, and the theatres where early movies first drew in the fans. As guide you could hardly find a more knowledgeable or familiar figure than Walter Pidgeon, a Canadian with eighty or more films to his credit. He recalls the personalities of the great stars he has known and explains how the technology developed that shows the stars on the screen.

Film clips highlight the funniest scenes and brightest comic stars in MGM's history.

Bob Monkhouse introduces the golden age of slapstick comedy.

This 1940 presentation features highlights of earlier (1928 onward) Oscar ceremonies including Shirley Temple and Walt Disney, plus acceptance speeches for films released in 1939 with recipients and presenters including Vivien Leigh, Judy Garland, Hattie McDaniel and more, with host Bob Hope.

The edition of Screen Snapshots celebrates 25 years of production. It looks at the content of edition #1, then a tribute to movie people who have died in those 25 years. Finally there are tributes to the Screen Snapshots series by Cecil De Mille, Walt Disney, Louella Parsons and Rosalind Russell.

A look back at 25 years of Columbia's series of newsreels chronicling the film industry and the lives of Hollywood stars. Clips from earlier films in the series are featured, along with a montage of film greats who have passed away in the intervening years.

An ambitious New York socialite plans an extravagant dinner party as her businessman husband, Oliver, contends with financial woes, causing a lot of tension between the couple. Meanwhile, their high-society friends and associates, including the gruff Dan Packard and his sultry spouse, Kitty, contend with their own entanglements, leading to revelations at the much-anticipated dinner.

A comedy romance in which breezy Haines, as a young lady killer, tries to capture the heart of Hyams who has turned him down for Bushman. Haines plots dozens of extreme measures to win her over, and finally goes so far as to drag her from the altar, bound and gagged.

Old sailor Chris Christofferson eagerly awaits the arrival of his grown daughter Anna, whom he sent at five years old to live with relatives in Minnesota. He has not seen her since, but believes her to be a decent and respectably employed young woman. When Anna arrives, however, it is clear that she has lived a hard life in the dregs of society, and that much of spirit has been extinguished. She falls in love with a young sailor rescued at sea by her father, but dreads to reveal to him the truth of her past. Both father and young man are deluded about her background, yet Anna cannot quite bring herself to allow them to remain deluded.

After decades of raising the motherless Smith children, housekeeper Emma Thatcher is faced with resentment when she marries their father.

In this through-the-years saga about a show business family, the fame of husband and wife vaudeville headliners of the 1880s is eclipsed by their son.

Tugboat, the Narcissus, is owned and captained by Annie Brennan, and among her crew are her alcoholic but good-natured husband, Terry, and her conscientious son, Alec. Annie continually loses business because of Terry's drunken mistakes. Alec wants to quit school to work on the tug full time, but Annie will not sacrifice her son's education. A grown Alec has followed in his mother's footsteps and becomes a mariner, but a more upscale one as the captain of a luxury liner. Alec returns home with his fiancée, Pat - the boss' daughter - with a grand plan to save Annie from the life that drunkard Terry has provided her. But ultimately, it's Annie and Terry that need to be Alec's savior, and by their move show him the meaning of true commitment.

Sylvia is a French teacher at an all-girls school who wants to find love. When she hears Bill Williams on the radio, she decides to go visit and thank him. However, difficult problems lie ahead when Lili gets in the way.

A housewife divorces her self-centered husband. Years later, she attends a party where her ex is pursuing another woman. Unbeknownst to him, she is the same ex-wife he'd neglected, now transformed into a fashionable socialite.

Unfinished pre-Code era film consisting of three sections with past performers from the stage and the vaudeville circuit, then-present-day performers and up-and-coming performers. Musical excerpts were later used in Broadway to Hollywood (1933), Nertsery Rhymes (1933), and Roast-Beef and Movies (1934). "The Lock Step" was later used in That's Entertainment! III (1994)

Landladies Polly Smith and Marie Jones, who operate boardinghouses on the same side of the street, are afflicted with numerous petty envies and jealousies but nevertheless are the best of friends. Polly invests in the stock market and begins to reap rewards, but she is unable to persuade Marie to use her life's savings to buy shares of American Cheese or Brazilian Bananas. Meanwhile, Marie's daughter, Genevieve, and Polly's son, William, just back from college, fall in love; but an argument between the ladies breaks up the romance; and smarting under Polly's patronizing manner, Marie plunges into the market herself and with the winnings is able to stage a society splurge at a fashionable resort.

Longtime friends become feuding mothers-in-law when their children marry.

A princess is forced to choose between a charming tutor and a rakish prince.

Culture shock bombards a woman and her family when they leave their hick town to help her sister out in her big-city beauty parlor.

Min, the owner of a dockside hotel, is forced to make difficult decisions about the future of Nancy, the young woman she took in as an infant.

In this holiday short, Jackie Cooper wants to throw a Christmas party for his friends on his football team but doesn't know how to go about it. His fellow stars at MGM help him out.

The road-show troupe of a top Broadway show go cross-country while taking the audience along on the on-stage scenes as well as what happens and is happening back stage of the production. The spectacular dancing ensembles and colorful costumes and pulchritude on-stage offers a contrasting background to the drabness of the backstage, where joy, sorrow, tragedies, deception, and romance are intertwined.

When the painter Christopher Bean dies, some unscrupulous art dealers try to get several of his paintings cheaply from a family who have no idea of their value.

A widow's decision to run for mayor kicks off a battle of the sexes in a small town.

An all-star revue featuring MGM contract players.

While plotting together to win back their lovers, the rich Madeleine and the penniless Pierre fall for each other.

Roommates panic and plan when they hear a radio report of a murderer loose in their neighborhood.

Lady Hamilton's love affair with Admiral Horatio Nelson rocks the British Empire.

Though she loves one man, an ambitious Palm Beach girl marries another, whom she thinks is rich. He turns out to be a fraud who thought she was an heiress. She returns to a successful hat shop she maintains catering to socialites. Her true love turns out to be in fact, a rich man who let her think he was not to test her.

An awkward teenager hopelessly in love with her older sister's boyfriend tries to make him notice her.

A zany musical about an amateur musician in search of work who impersonates a big band leader.

The wealthy Jiggs is tired of being left out of the swanky parties thrown by his social-climbing wife Maggie and their daughter. He decides to teach them a "lesson" by faking his own suicide, but things don't quite turn out the way he planned.

The story of two feuding Irish immigrant families living in a tenement.

A womanizing city man meets Tillie in the country. When he sees that her father has a very large bankroll for his workers, he persuades her to elope with him.

It's more fun than a barrel of monkeys. Regular village "cut-ups" are those actor chaps and actresses.

Tillie Todd gifts her wealthy Aunt Sally a dime-store tomato pincushion, falsely claiming it’s handmade. Cousin Percy exposes the lie, vying for Sally’s favor. At Sally’s birthday, Tillie’s suitor “The Bat” crash-lands his flying invention, inspiring Sally to take flight herself. Declared dead after vanishing for days, she wills Tillie the pincushion but leaves most of her estate to her pet monkey Jim, with Percy as eventual heir. Percy kidnaps Jim to hasten his fortune, framing Tillie for the crime. Pursued by police, Tillie is saved when Sally returns alive. In frustration, Tillie tears apart the despised pincushion—only to discover it stuffed with $10,000.

Tillie and her neighbor Mr. Pipkins are both distraught over their respective marriages. One day, they sneak off to have a lively time at Coney Island. They flee the park together just as their spouses come to find them. After a chase, each is rescued from the ocean and reconcile with their respective spouses.

Tilly is a scrub woman in a munitions factory.