Walter Miller

In the span of five years, pioneering director D.W. Griffith delivered some 450 films for the Biograph Company at a rate of two or three films per week. One and two reels in length, these works showed the filmmaker inventing, borrowing, and perfecting techniques he later used to memorable effect in "The Birth of a Nation," "Intolerance," "Way Down East" and "Orphans of the Storm." Including Lillian and Dorothy Gish, Mary Pickford, Mack Sennett, Lionel Barrymore, Henry Walthall, and Mae Marsh. Among the 22 titles included on this landmark release are such widely recognized masterworks as "The Musketeers of Pig Alley," "The Battle at Elderbush Gulch," "The New York Hat," and "A Corner in Wheat."

A nostalgic look at film clips from the Silent era.

Dick Tracy goes up against a villain known as The Ghost, who can turn himself invisible.

Reformed jewel thief Simon Templar lands in hot water when a look-alike smuggles stolen goods out of Egypt.

Wall Street broker Robert Cain, Sr., is jailed for embezzling. His college graduate son Bob then turns to crime to raise money for his father's release. As assistant to mobster Mickey Dwyer, then falls for Dwyer's girl Lucky. He winds up in the same prison as his father.

Protecting himself in an attack by rustlers, Rancher Steve Holden believes he has killed one of the attackers, young Bud Mathews, who in reality has warned Holden of the rustlers' approach. Unaware that Mathews was actually killed by rustler boss Cass Barton, Holden heads out to Mathews' home town where he plans to tell the boy's family of his death but instead uncovers a plan by a local businessman to force Mathews' father out of his ranch.

On a cruise ship from Honolulu to San Francisco, the famous Chinese detective encounters four more murders while trying to figure out the murder of a Scotland Yard friend.

Undercover agent Mark Sheldon gets paroled to a remote tropical island with a diamond mine manned by slave labor run by sadistic Stephen Danel.

Dying Joan Ames meets criminal Dan Hardesty on a luxury liner as he is being transported back to America by policeman Steve Burke to face execution. Joan and Dan fall in love, their fates unbeknownst to one another.

A reporter gets himself sent to prison to expose a mobster.

Embittered after serving time for a burglary he did not commit, Joe Bell is soon back in jail, on a prison farm. His love for the foreman's daughter leads to a fight between them, leading to the older man's death due to a weak heart. Joe and Mabel go on the run as he thinks no-one would believe a nobody like him.

An outbreak of cholera threatens a luxury liner in this surprisingly low-budget melodrama from RKO. En route from Shanghai to San Francisco, chief engineer Crusher McKay (Victor McLaglen) and shipboard doctor Tony Craig (Chester Morris) become rivals for the attention of nurse Ann Grayson (Wendy Barrie). A Chinese stowaway, meanwhile, infects the stokehold with cholera and it is left to Crusher to keep the engines at full throttle until reaching harbor. But morale sinks to an all-time low when Crusher himself is stricken and the overworked men threaten with mutiny. Tony attempts to keep the stokers in check but the situation is growing more dangerous by the minute when a heroic Crusher rises from his sickbed. Leaving their previous petty squabbles behind, Tony and Crusher manage to guide the ship safely to harbor, where the doc and Ann rekindle their romance.

A mad doctor named Zanoff uses a drug to bring himself back from the dead after his execution in prison. Dick Tracy sets out to capture Zanoff before he can put his criminal gang back together again.

Kenny Williams, a lieutenant on the homicide squad, is engaged to Maxine Carroll, the Mayor's secretary. Or isn't he rather married with his job? For each time he has a date with his longtime fiancée, he is prevented from keeping it by his devotion to duty. Maxine, in desperation, decides to take action and bring Kenny to the altar. Who will win, Maxine's curves or the glorious fight against crime?

Charlie Dugan is a quick-thinking boss of a traveling circus playing small towns in Missouri and Kansas.

A Paris sculptor (Richard Dix) fakes blindness in Los Angeles to recover his blackmailed sister's love letters.

Jim 'Socker' Conway, former boxer and FBI hero, is maneuvered for political reasons into a do-nothing job in the district attorney's office. Meanwhile, he meets wild debutante Letty Lane, girlfriend of mob mouthpiece Steve Lawrence; and Letty's much nicer sister Susan. Now the slot machine gang brutally beats Jim's friends Franz and Otto. And Jim finds a way to use his nominal position to go into the racket- busting business. But his success puts Letty in deadly peril...

A crime novelist devises a scheme to catch the thief who has stolen the valuable "Konjer Diamonds". Director Lew Landers' 1938 B-film stars Preston Foster, Whitney Bourne, Cecil Kellaway, Donald Meek, Samuel S. Hinds, Arthur Lake, Paul Guilfoyle and June Johnson.

A government representative travels to the backwoods of Arkansas to convince the people there of the benefits to them of a proposed dam on their river.

A variety of people are searching for a long-hidden treasure somewhere on an island. Chapter titles: 1.The Isle of Fear 2.The Ghost Talks 3.The Phantom Duel 4.Buried Alive 5.The Girl Who Vanished 6.Trapped by the Flood 7.The Cannon Roars 8.The Circle of Death 9.The Pirate's Revenge 10.The Crash 11.Dynamite 12.The Bridge of Doom 13.The Mad Flight 14.The Jaws of Destruction 15.Justice

In Shanghai amidst Sino-Japanese warfare an adventurer (Sanders) collecting money from gun suppliers falls in loves with a French singer (Del Rio).

When a singing, song-writing prizefighter (Dick Foran) is framed for murder and sent to the state pen, his girlfriend (June Travis) sets out to prove his innocence. Director Frank MacDonald's 1938 crime drama--with songs--also stars John Litel, Dick Purcell, Tommy Bupp, Ward Bond, Veda Ann Borg, George E. Stone, John Hamilton and Jonathan Hale.

Fake fortunetellers win the confidence of clients and then get them to part with their money by buying mining stocks which are worthless.

After doing time for a crime he didn't commit, a cowboy tries to find the men who framed him.

The Harper wagon train is carrying money and Bull and his gang are after it. When their first attack is foiled by the rangers, Allen trails them. But he is captured and his ranger badge used to divert the rangers away leaving the wagon train unprotected.

Retired lawman Kentucky Wade and his three buddies, Mike Morales, "Dude" Hanford and "Trigger" Benton come to Brimstone and help their friends Larry Munro and his sister, Lucy , in their fight to retain control of Larry's rich ore mine. "Doc" Hardy , as an old friend of Wade's, joins them in their efforts to keep Matt Keeler , the scheming owner of "The Brimstone News", from his efforts to wrest control of Munro's property and mine. Keller employs a legion of henchmen, and sidelines at running runs guns to Red Hatchet and his tribe so they can also get in on the fray against the Munro's and Kentucky and friends.

Director Lew Landers' 1937 B-film, about a crew of misfit pilots working for an Argentinian air service, stars Chester Morris, Van Heflin, Whitney Bourne, Onslow Stevens, Richard Lane, Douglas Walton, Paul Guilfoyle, Solly Ward, Walter Miller and Rita LaRoy.

With no other prospects, a World War I veteran puts the skills they taught him in the War to use.

After losing his bid for district attorney, an aspiring young lawyer agrees to defend a ring of car thieves.

College football player is expelled for ticket scalping, and teams up with reporter to expose his school's hypocrisy.

A rancher attempts to find the villain behind a land-stealing operation.

After a mine cave in, the rescue crew risks their lives to search for two trapped miners.

Young Jim Stanton is a conscientious surgeon, but spends too many off-duty hours pursuing his passion for aviation to suit his stuffy father. When it is discovered that a passenger killed in a plane that Jim crashes was a married woman, the resulting scandal prompts the hospital to put Jim on probation. His pride wounded, Jim takes to the open road and enjoys the simpler life of a vagabond. In Los Angeles--where he is arrested for vagrancy and put to work on a road crew--Jim runs into old pal Dick Miller, who gets him a job as a mechanic for Roberts Aviation. But maintaining his anonymity becomes more difficult, particularly when a pretty nurse, Doris King, decides to make Jim's redemption her personal crusade.

The spoiled, hard-partying son of a senator runs away from home after being reprimanded by his father, finds himself down-on-his luck in a tiny western town, and is rehabilitated through the friendship and wisdom of a kind and patient rancher.

Helen Roberts, who's on probation, goes back to work as a waitress at Torre's Fish Palace, a San Francisco waterfront dive. The customers are low characters trying to make time with Helen and ex-rum runners trying to make a dishonest dollar. Some of the latter, including Helen's unwelcome suitor Martin Rhodes, are after a mysterious, valuable hidden "cargo"; when violence erupts, Helen finds herself innocently involved, and is soon on the run from both cops and crooks.

Hoping to rid a small western community of its corrupt political machine, Ken Marshall (Ken Maynard) runs for sheriff against the bad guys' candidate and wins the election. Dissatisfied with this, the villains contrive to frame Ken on a murder charge. He breaks out of jail and tracks down the genuine culprit,

While a ship captain is at sea dealing with a mutiny among his crew, his wife is at home having an affair with his best friend.

While in Singapore, a man and a pretty young girl find themselves mixed up in blackmail and murder.

At Portland, Oregon, playboy pilot Len Kendrick (Vinton Haworth) lands at the end of a cross-country record flight, met by his father J.P. Kendrick (Charley Grapewin) who owns Amalgamated Air Lines. Len is a media darling, adored by fans for his daring flights. He is in love with Amalgamated stewardess Kay Armstrong (Sally Eilers) who is dating veteran pilot "Wad" Madison (Robert Armstrong). Len dates her sister Penny (Frances Sage) who learns that his hard-drinking and recklessness has caused the death of his co-pilot. Penny knows that he was drinking before the fateful flight and only escaped prosecution by bribing a bartender. She leaves Len who ends up at Amalgamated as a line pilot, being tutored by Wad.

A brilliant but deranged neurosurgeon becomes obsessively fixated on a judge's daughter who in no way wants him. With the help of an escaped criminal whose face he has surgically deformed, the mad man lures her, her father, and her fiance to his isolated castle-like home, where he has created a torture chamber with the intent of torturing them for having "tortured" him.

An admiral's son with no interest in carrying on the family tradition is a successful crooner. He finally joins the Navy to prove he can, but with no real love in it.

Buck Ward and the Wolverine Kid, who each own one of the ivory handled guns, continue the feud started by their fathers.

Two competing teams of scientists search the African jungles for a secret formula.

A movie serial in 12 chapters: After gold is discovered in the town of Nugget, the titular band of thieves and cutthroats inundates the frontier settlement. A group of three compatriots -- upstanding ex-sheriff Jack Woods, his harmonica-playing friend Laramie and tricky, smooth-talking gambler Deacon -- combine their respective skills in a fateful struggle to deceive and disarm the gang.

"Red" Davison(Buck Jones), the sheriff of Sun Dog, sacrifices his job and his good name to save his best friend, "Silent" Slade from the hangman's noose, following a framed-up court decision which sentences Slade to hang for the murder of "Scotty McKee (J.P. McGowan). Davidson allows Slade to escape from jail and follows him to aid him in proving his innocence.

A young mechanic gets a job with a small airline, which he helps win a mail contract. A rival airline plots to destroy it in order to get the contracts for itself.

An accomplished aviator sets out to locate treasure hidden by one of his ancestors. He encounters interference from various adversaries.

Accused of a murder he did not commit, Ken leaves the country. Three years later Evans finds him in the jungle. When Evans dies, Ken seeing the resemblance, assumes his identity and returns to clear his name.

Rocky Rhodes returns to find his father dead and his best friend Joe accused of the murder. The culprit is Murtch who now lets Joe break jail and then has him shot escaping. When Rocky starts to interfere with Murtch's plans, he has Rocky framed for murder. Rocky now has to prove Murtch is guilty while escaping the law.

A cowboy is hired to track down a gang of rustlers, but gets involved with a beautiful girl trying to run her grandfather's gold mine and other outlaws who are trying to stop her.

An Air Force washout and his buddy room with a pretty young lady. Desperate for jobs during the Depression, they finally land employment with the mob.

Wanting the Lance ranch, Burkett kills Lance and brings in an imposter to pose as the heir Ken Lance. Ken learns of the plan, captures the imposter, and arrives posing as himself. In an ensuing gunfight a man is killed and Ken is in trouble when not only is he accused of the murder, but the imposter escapes and convinces the Sheriff he's the real Ken Lance.

A lovesick fool bumbles into espionage and finds a stolen plane.

Promotional short produced by General Electric for release through Warner Bros. to advertise GE's home appliances.

A prizefighter is convicted of a murder that was actually committed by his sister.

Romantic comedy drama about three friends in New York. Cassie has come to New York and goes to work as a model where her friend Gladys works. She falls in love with wealthy young Jerry who is already married. Gladys has the same probelm with her man Phelps.

A foreword warns against the peril of yellow journalism, and the story illustrates it by following events in the upstate New York town of Cornwall after prominant financier George Ferguson is killed. Two types of New York City journalists descend on Cornwall, one interested in facts, the other in getting sensational "news". Mrs. Ferguson is known to have been friendly with a local banker. The Fergusons quarrel the evening he is killed (by "burglers", his wife tells the police later), and she is arrested, spurred on by the "bad" journalists, who also manage to badger the banker's wife into the hospital. Meanwhile, young Bruce Foster runs the Cornwall Courier, and shows the big city reporters how to dig out real news while they attempt to subvert justice for their own ends.

Natty Bumppo, known as Hawk-Eye, is a frontiersman in the American wilderness. Together with his Indian friends Chingachgook and Uncas, he fights battles against nefarious white soldiers as well as the vicious Indian Magua and his cohorts.

Bill Bronson is a likable young bank clerk, whose congenital thirst for liquor is kept under control until he joins his wife Mary at getting blotto at a company party. From there it is a downward spiral.

Heiress learns to fly from aeronautical engineer. Things get complicated as their affair progresses.

During a boxing match a fighter accidentally kills his opponent in the ring. Afterwards he finds himself falling in love with the dead man's sister.

The Eagle uses sky writing to make threats against a corporation. Nathan Gregory owns a travelling fairground and is thought to be the Eagle. Craig McCoy is a pilot who goes looking for the Eagle when Gregory turns up missing.

More a romantic melodrama than a true Western, this Buck Jones vehicle from Columbia starred Jones as Buck Randall, a carefree cowboy whose popularity with the local saloon girls becomes the talk of the town.

Richard Grant, imprisoned in India for a crime he did not commit, escapes and makes his way to Africa.

Director Lloyd Bacon's 1931 drama takes a different look at the Broadway arena by focusing on the owners of a theatrical costume shop.

A gambling ring run out of the Mogul Taxi company is intent on fixing college football games. Football star Harold "Red" Grange is a target for the gamblers, whose thugs try to eliminate Grange from playing. Grange's buddy Buddy is himself vulnerable to blackmail, since he has broken team rules by marrying. The crooks use all their wiles to keep Grange and Buddy from leading their team to victory.

A police dog helps to track down two payroll robbers.

A Mexico/United States border patrol officer is aided by his police dog, Rinty.

A prospector is murdered by The Cactus Kid and his gang, who hope to find the murdered man's goldmine. The miner's dog, Rin-Tin-Tin, recognizes the killers, who thereafter seek to use the dog to locate the lost mine. With the help of a government agent and a young girl, Rinty saves the mine and brings the bad guys to justice.

El Malo, notorious Mexican bandit, forces the Mayor of Sierra Blanca, Seth Landport, to open the safe and turn over to him 2,000 pesos, which the bandit gives a promissory note for to the Mayor. Seth rushes to the cantina where Sheriff Rankin is drinking, and the sheriff posts a reward for the capture of El Malo. El Malo informs his men of the reward. The bandit and his sidekick, Pedro, visit the cantina where Pedro resumes a former acquaintance with Dolores, while El Malo has his attention directed to a tango being performed by Carmita. El Malo pushes her dancing partner aside and finishes the dance with Carmita. Since Seth's description of him is not accurate, El May visits the sheriff and promises to deliver the wanted bandit to the cantina the following night. THe following morning, El Malo and Pedro depart, and, halting their horses on a hill, view the stagecoach being held up by a trio of outlaws.

The villain of this serial, the "Wolf Devil", who's head covering amazingly looks to be a REAL wolf's head, is determined to eradicate the non native races from Alaska.

A Secret Service agent seeks his missing brother in Africa, and finds his mission complicated by ivory thieves, a girl with a mysterious past, and a troublesome gorilla.

An inventor adds new innovations to an air company's planes, prompting the owners of a rival company to set out to steal them. The stakes are sky-high as an airman and an aviatrix find themselves in constant peril, both on earth and above the clouds.

Exciting late-silent 10-episode serial, with all the hallmarks of the genre, including daring cavalry rescues, gold robbers and, of course, the beautiful white girl being burned at the stake by indians. Later re-edited into a feature-length film of the same name.

A Pathe serial in ten chapters of two-reels each: Dan Winterslip, a wealthy man in Honolulu, has not spoken to his brother, who owns a hotel next to Winterslip's estate, in over twenty years. Minerva, sister to the estranged brothers, comes from Boston to try to reconcile the two men. John Quincy Winterslip, Dan's nephew, receives a letter instructing him to retrieve a box from an attic in San Francisco and dump the contents into the ocean. He is on board a ship bound for Hawaii in which other passengers are also after the box. Dan Winterslip is murdered. Charlie Chan, a Chinese detective, offers to help solve the killing and the mysteries surround the box. Chan is looking for the person whose wristwatch is missing the number 'three.'

The sister of a silver mine owner hires a renegade pilot to fly her to her brother's rescue.

Silent Canadian drama

Tarzan and Jane are traveling to Paris to help his old friend Countess de Coude, who is being threatened by her brother, Nikolas Rokoff. Rokoff has Tarzan tossed overboard. He survives, comes ashore in North Africa, and goes to Paris to search for Jane. In Paris, Tarzan reunites with his old friend Paul D'Arnot, who informs him that Jane was taken to Africa. Tarzan returns just in time to save Jane from a lion attack, and soon defeats Rokoff and his henchmen.

In the apartment hotel lived the aspiring maid, whose solicitude maintained order in the bachelor's apartment. He was her ideal, and the all-adoring bell-boy was firmly but gently given to understand that maids who read "Heliotrope Glendening's Advice to Young Ladies" look higher than ice-water toters. A compromising complication, however, with an unexpected visit from a beautiful lady, quite convinces the aspiring one that wealthy young bachelors may be the grandest men ever, but their aspirations, when it comes to the crucial test, are not for chambermaids. Science influences his actions so much that he gets into trouble with the police.

Two business partners pursue the same woman. She accepts the marriage proposal of the irresponsible partner, much to her later regret. He squanders money on gambling, as his interest in her gradually wanes. One day after losing the company money in a card game, he decides to commit suicide. He telephones his wife from the office, as he puts a revolver near his head. The wife tries to keep him talking while the reliable business partner races to the office in an attempt to save his old friend. Will he make it in time?

The supposition was that she was born a tease, for from her first teeth to the time she was almost grown, she vented her witcheries on her unsuspecting parents and the wild things of her mountain home. But that was before the man from the valley lost his way and later found it back again, bearing away the little tease to the valley. While she suffered the qualms of broken faith, her father passed through a like struggle, for he felt the precepts of the "beloved book" had failed him. He closed the door of his cabin upon the world and the light from his window, lighting the wayfarer over the mountain path, disappeared. The struggle over, it came hack in its place in time to beckon the little tease as she left the valley behind.

Rose and her cousin Mary dwell in the land of romance, but real Romeos are scarce in this prosaic age. Yet Rose, in spite of a gay young Lothario who steps in the way of her own true love, finds her way to love-land. That was where Mary's perfidy came in. It showed up Lothario's true character, while at the same time it brought Mary back to her own determined young lover.

Summoned to the trading post, granddad promised the girls the money from the deal. He remained true to the end, though it seemed for a time as if his purpose would never he fulfilled. Cunning minds were thwarted and the girl received a double promise.

This is the story of Gato, an Italian immigrant, who lives with his wife, Marie, and his younger brother, Giuseppe, on a small truck farm in the west. Gato becomes so intent on his work that he neglects to show his wife the little attentions she demands. A foppish wandering Italian, Sandro, sees in this an opportunity to work his ends, but is prevented by the timely interference of Giuseppe.

In this picture it is shown how a convict's life still remains under the ban of the law, even after the expiration of his term. With the detective continually on his track, he is able to save both a young woman's honor and her weak brother from the hands of a designing employer.

A young couple struggle to get ahead, the wife always assuaging the troubles of her melancholy husband. As he climbs the ladder of success, he abandons the homely values and takes up with another woman. His wife leaves him, returning to her mother's home where she bears a child. When the husband is abandoned by his concubine, remorse drives him to find his wife.

This story is somewhat in the nature of a poetical fantasy, and may be construed as the spectator pleases. It is the story of a wanderer who prefers to seek, through his flute, the spirit of truth, that he may give it out into the world as he passes through his various journeys and experiences in life and thus make earth a better and fairer place. He prefers this to the perpetual strife for gain.

The reporter assigned to obtain a copy of the message from the Japanese Government unraveled the mystery of its disappearance in a clever manner. Every foreign government naturally was eager for a copy ahead, while the meeting of the Japanese Ambassador and Secretary of State was surrounded with greater risk than they imagined.

The stakes were to go to the one who outlived the other two. In a quarrel one ended the chance of another. In the mountain the two survivors of the bet came together again, one now an outlaw but through a woman's subterfuge the money fell to the less likely of them all, Reed, declared to be "on his last legs."

The hardship of earning an existence for the family made it impossible for the mother to approve the little pretty things which her daughter liked. Lack of attention made her son dissolute, but later the sturdy stock of his mother showed in him and the cozy home he provided for dad and sister made them forget the past.

The prospector had taught the Indian boy the doctrine of peace. When his tribe resisted the attack of another tribe the boy did not take part. The din of the battle, as the horsemen circled them again and again, the moans of men caught under falling horses struck terror in the boy's heart The incensed warriors cast him from the tribe with the brand of a coward. It was then that his opportunity came to follow the white man's wonderful doctrine. "Big love man lay down life for friend,"

The young authoress had come to the edge of the desert for her mother's sake. There she met the two young prospectors and a romance began. But the men were about to go across the desert, where they had heard rumors of gold. They decided to play square and before going determined to let the coin decide who should ask the young authoress the all-important question. The flip of the coin decided the older should try his luck first. He learned the girl did not love him. But the other she promised to marry when he should return from the gold lands, and the care of her sick mother, who would then be restored to health, should no longer interfere with her happiness. The young partners soon reached the other side of the desert, where success came to them far beyond their expectations.

Behold in this film the Uplifter, a peculiarity of the human species, quite convinced that all that is, is wrong. Forth to the uplift he minds everybody's business but his own, until that business is as clean, pure and spotless as himself. Verily in these later days is there no school of art named, "Minding One's Business."

An eye strain was really the cause of making the young business man realize that he loved the young typist and a wrongly compounded remedy for the same eye strain placed the girl in grave danger, the danger being averted merely through the ingenuity of the young business man with the help of his friend, the power superintendent of the city's street-car lines.

The young lover leaving home at the opening of the war to join the Confederate Army, tells his brother to take care of his fatherless sweetheart during the perilous times which are to follow. But the brother weakens and fails to be true to his trust. He permits her to believe that her lover is dead. Caught in the neighborhood, however, between the lines of the enemy, the brother appears before them at the crucial moment. In retaliation the false brother turns informer. Both forces are aroused to arms and during the attack upon the girl defending her wounded lover and family alone in the negro's cabin retribution comes in the form of a stray bullet.

The two brothers and their adopted daughter of the household grew up from childhood together. The girl and the younger brother were childhood sweethearts. His elder brother was considered the bad man and dead shot of the hills. The younger brother has been living in the valley for a long time and returns home to his family. He is now refined, educated, and, of course, a revelation to the little girl, who, though betrothed to the elder brother, is strongly attracted by him. Hence there is a renewal of childhood affection which the elder brother does not take kindly to.

A man recognizes the thief who had previously robbed him as one of the men involved in an unrelated mob shootout.

An abusive father and husband attends a play one night and sees that the "villain" in the piece does to his family exactly what he is doing to his own family.

The physician's death orphans his two adolescent daughters. Their older brother is able to convert some of the doctor's small estate to cash. But it is late in the day, and with the banks closed he stores the money in his father's household safe. The slatternly housekeeper, aware of the money, enlists a criminal acquaintance to crack the safe. She attempts to get into the adjacent room where the sisters tremble in fear, but finds that the door is locked. The drunken housekeeper menaces them by brandishing a gun through a hole in the wall.

Walter Miller loves Mary Pickford, but he is very shy and doesn't dare to speak up, so she prefers Bobby Harron. All perfectly natural. But one morning when he is nursing a hangover, Elmer Booth and Harry Carey break into her apartment and threaten her, until Walter rushes in to her rescue.