Working-class Stella Martin marries high-end Stephen Dallas and soon they have a daughter named Laurel. But Stephen’s incessant demands of Stella to become what she isn’t leads to their eventual separation. Stephen later marries Helen Morrison (his prior fiancée), and Laurel becomes the focus of Stella’s life and love. Nothing is too good for Laurel as far as Stella is concerned. Determined to give her all the advantages, she takes Laurel on a trip to an expensive resort where Laurel makes friends with rich kids. After an embarrassing incident, Stella realizes that her daughter would go farther in life without Stella as her mother. Her subsequent sacrifice is shattering.
Jefferson Russett runs a logging company; his brother, Steve, is the prodigal son. Jeff cuts off his allowance and puts him to work, but on his first day, he is tricked into signing a contract allowing arch-rivals Barton Logging to use Russett railways. Jeff hauls Steve up to the logging camp, but he steals a plane. It runs out of gas in Barton territory, where spitfire Jo is running the camp. Naturally, this shrew must be tamed, so Steve, calling himself Steve Martin, sets out to do just that as he’s trapped in the camp for two months until the next boat anyhow.
In rural 1840’s Scotland, Gavin Dishart arrives to become the new “little minister” of Thrums’s Auld Licht church. He meets a mysterious young gypsy girl in the dens and to his horror Babbie draws him into her escape from the soldiers after she incites a Luddite riot. But unknown to Gavin, Babbie is more than she seems. And they must overcome her secret, the villagers’ fears of her, and worst of all, Gavin’s devotion to his mother’s sensibilities, before they can openly declare their love.
A young couple struggling against poverty must keep their marriage a secret in order for the husband to keep his job, as his boss doesn’t like to hire married men.
A crooked lawyer trying to cheat a young girl out of her inheritance tries to convince a sea captain to help him. Re-released in 1939 as “Phantom Submarine U-67.”
In the South Seas, a half-caste island girl refuses to follow tradition and marry a fellow islander, instead falling in love with a white man and heir to an American fortune.
This is a typically benign silent comedy/drama whose only distinction is that it is set among the skyscrapers of 1928 NYC. Either the location work is real (hard to beleive they’d take chances with the lives of stars) or the matte work is extraordinry for its day. Blondy and Swede are gruff best friends who build skyscrapers. Blondy gets sweet on a girl he saves from a falling beam, Sally, but when he is injured in an accident and temporarily crippled, he rejects her. Swede tries every desperate measure to get Blondy to fight back, to try to walk, even masquerading as stealing Sally away from him. It all comes right in the end. Oscar nomination for Screenplay
A beautiful con artist marries Hayes Hallan, the owner of a pearl-rich island. No sooner has the couple said “I do” than Beatrice’s partners in crime show up, claiming to be the bride’s parents.
Amid big-budget medieval pageantry, King Richard goes on the Crusades leaving his brother Prince John as regent, who promptly emerges as a cruel, grasping, treacherous tyrant. Apprised of England’s peril by message from his lady-love Marian, the dashing Earl of Huntingdon endangers his life and honor by returning to oppose John, but finds himself and his friends outlawed, and Marian apparently dead. Enter Robin Hood, acrobatic champion of the oppressed, laboring to set things right through swash buckling feats and cliffhanging perils!