Will Rogers
1996 Biography of the great Florenz Ziegfeld featuring rare clips and interviews with his daughter and still living showgirls.
A compilation of Shirley Temple newsreel appearances from the 1930's.
Period music, film clips and newsreel footage combined into a visual exploration of the American entertainment industry during the Great Depression.
Ken Murray narrates his 16mm home movies shot over 35 years in Hollywood.
A compilation featuring comedic stars of the silent era including Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton, W.C. Fields and Harold Lloyd.
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.
Horse trainer Steve Tapley is caught between the feuding Martingale and Shattuck families. He sides with young Nancy Martingale and her grandfather Ezra, and the feud is to be resolved by a horse race between the favorites of each family. Unfortunately, the Martingale's horse, Greyboy, only runs well in mud. And it hasn't rained in a long time.
A husband makes fun of his wife's theatrical aspirations when she agrees to appear in a local production. When she begins to neglect him, he decides to retaliate by also going on stage.
A small-town newspaper publisher finds himself in opposition to the local banker on the return to town of a lad jailed possibly wrongly for a theft from the bank.
Based on George Ade's play which, in part, was based on an incident in a 1902 election in Wyoming, with women's-right-to-vote playing a large role. Here, Jim Hackler, local party-boss in a Wyoming county, has to decide to do what's right and lose the election, or what's wrong and win it.
When riverboat captain Doctor John Pearly (Rogers) learns that his nephew Duke has killed a man in self-defense, he urges Duke to turn himself in. But Duke's only chance for freedom is the testimony of a half-crazed witness, New Moses, who has disappeared upriver. With time running out - and Pearly's rival Captain Eli itching to race his paddle wheeler, the Pride of Paducah, against Pearly's steamboat, the Claremore Queen - Pearly sets off on a wild race to find New Moses, free Duke...and lasso a win for the Claremore Queen.
President Franklin Roosevelt appoints a theatrical producer as the new Secretary of Amusement in order to cheer up an American public still suffering through the Depression. The new secretary soon runs afoul of political lobbyists out to destroy his department.
Judge Priest, a proud Confederate veteran, restores the justice in a small town in the Post-Bellum Kentucky using his common sense and his great sense of humanity.
A small-town druggist is henpecked by his social-climbing wife to sell his pharmacy to a national chain. In addition, she tries to set up her pretty young daughter with the nitwit son of the chain's owner, even though the girl is in love with the handsome son of the town doctor. Finally the druggist decides he's had enough and takes matters into his own hands.
Rogers plays a small town banker in the 1890s whose chief rival is the deacon (Middleton) with whom he has traded horse flesh. Taylor is a bank teller who places a winning $4,500 bet on a 10-1 harness racing horse, making him Rogers' bank partner.
In this engaging adaptation of James Gould Cozzen's novel The Last Adam, film icon Will Rogers portrays Dr. George Bull, a compassionate, highly regarded small-town physician who often prescribes a healthy dose of common sense! But when Bull begins dating a widow (Vera Allen), the local gossips misconstrue the story. To make matters worse, Bull's plainspoken manner earns him an enemy in the wealthy owner of a nearby construction camp. But once it's learned that the camp has caused illness by polluting the local water supply, the good doctor steps in to try to restore the town's health - and his reputation!
After losing their Missouri home during the Great Depression, the Skitch family pulls up stakes and heads west to California to begin life anew. Comedy, released in 1933.
The Frake family attend the Iowa State Fair. Father Abel enters his Hampshire boar, Blue Boy, in the hog contents. Mother Melissa enters the mincemeat competition. And their children, Margy and Wayne, find love with newspaper reporter Pat Gilbert and trapeze artist Emily Joyce. But will everyone return home safe and happy or will hearts be broken?
On a Mediterranean cruise, Earl Tinker, a manufacturer of razor blades, is the target of a femme fatale in the pay of a business rival, and he becomes embroiled in a feud between two Arab tribes.
A hobo searches the countryside for the daughter he lost when his wife left him...
Husband and father Will Rogers tells his spoiled wife and children that they have to economize.
A Connecticut Yankee is a 1931 American film adaptation of Mark Twain's 1889 novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. It was directed by David Butler to a script by William M. Conselman, Owen Davis, and Jack Moffitt. It was produced by Fox Film Corporation (later 20th Century Fox), who had earlier produced the 1921 silent adaptation of the novel, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. A Connecticut Yankee is the first sound film adaptation of Twain's novel.
An American ambassador arrives in a small country that is being convulsed by political intrigue and civil unrest. He befriends the young boy who is to be the country's king, to ensure that the boy is prepared to take on the role and also to see that he lives long enough to assume the crown.
Lightnin' and Mary Jones are co-owners of a hotel built right on a state border, used by divorcing wives so they can pretend to be in California while establishing residency in Nevada. When Lightnin' refuses to sell his share of the hotel to a gang of crooks, Mary is coerced into divorcing her husband so that she can sign over the deed herself.
Hiram Draper is an all-American self-made man who profoundly distastes everything British. Yet he must travel to London with his family. When Junior falls in love with an aristocratic girl, whose father despises Americans with equal intensity, fireworks are just about to start.
Oklahoma mechanic Pike Peters finds himself part owner of an oil field. His wife Idy, hitherto content, decides the family must go to Paris to get "culture" and meet "the right kind of people." Pike and his grown son and daughter soon have flirtatious French admirers; Idy rents a chateau from an impoverished aristocrat; while Pike responds to each new development with homespun wit. In the inevitable clash, will pretentiousness and sophistication or common sense triumph?
Margie, singer on a showboat, decides to try her luck in New York inspite of being in love with the owners grandson. She is successful, but suddenly she hears that the showboat is in deep financial trouble, and she calls all the boats former stars to join in a big show to rescue it.
Laconic cowboy Maverick Brander just happens to be a very wealthy rancher, but the money doesn't really mean that much to him. The same can't be said for his social-climbing wife and his man-crazy daughter Bossy. His wife, with the help of some political bosses, helps Maverick get elected to Congress, where he manages to get in all sorts of trouble, including getting blackmailed by opponents of a bill he's trying to get passed.
In this silent short film, the first in a series of travelesques entitled "Abroad with Will Rogers" featuring European locales, Rogers takes the viewer on a tour of Dublin, Ireland.
Will Rogers, America's unofficial ambassador abroad, invites us to rural England. He starts at Windsor Castle, and we see the boys at Eton in their top hats. He motors past the oak trees of the king's riding park, where he strolls up to deer. Then it's on to Thomas Gray's churchyard and to a thatched cottage. Rogers buys 'hollyhawks' from a vendor, stops at Ascot, and goes to Hampton Court Palace to see Henry VIII's private garden and the first tennis court. He concludes with a boat ride down the 'Temms' past country estates, elaborate house boats, and picnicking punters. A stop at a riverside hotel for tea ends the tour. Rogers makes wry observations throughout.
A young boy, determined to make money enough to buy his mother a birthday present, finds a variety of odd jobs and finally starts up a makeshift circus.
A young cowboy takes a job at a ranch owned by two aging spinsters, unaware that both are completely in love with him.
Will Rogers plays a lazy man who is chosen by a group of men to run for Congress.
In this short, Will Rogers introduces and concludes the movie. And, then, he acts in different fake versions of highlights from famous movies--such as Douglas Fairbanks as ROBIN HOOD, the bull fighting scene from BLOOD AND SAND as well as a recreation of a KEYSTONE COPS short.
Don't Park There was one of a series of two-reel comedies Will Rogers made for producer Hal Roach during the 1923-4 season. The story amounts to little more than a one-joke anecdote, but oddly enough the joke is more relevant now than it was in 1924: this is the tale of a man who can't run a simple errand in the city because he can't find a parking space.
A shy cowboy is interested in the local school teacher, but must compete with a bully for her attention.
The two-reel comedies Will Rogers made for producer Hal Roach during the 1923-4 season are a mixed lot. Two of the shorts feature parodies of then-current movie stars (Douglas Fairbanks, Valentino, etc.) and are still enjoyable for buffs interested in the silent era.
Hal Roach produced comedy has Will Rogers playing the title character, a rather slow, dimwitted man who works on a ranch where he usually gets pushed around at. A woman (Marie Mosquini) comes to town looking for someone to help her photograph some of the animals so she picks Hank and soon regrets it.
A morals reformer returns from Hollywood to his small town, and shows his fellow citizens the results of his investigation.
"Ropes" Reilly shows off his impressive roping skills, then runs afoul of the local townsfolk.
Ek is a disembodied spirit, required to wait his turn in the boring cosmos until he is allowed to inhabit an earthly body. Impatient, he sneaks off to earth to find a body and, after several failed attempts, finds Professor Ezra Botts, a timid old pedant and researcher of psychic phenomena. Life fairly well kicks Professor Botts around as it does all timid souls, and he gets little love or respect. But during an experimental trance, he is able to leave his body behind and at that moment, Ek sees his chance and slips in, taking over the professor's body. The "new" professor is energetic, charismatic, and dynamic, and from the limbo in which he floats, the real professor fears that Ek is going to wear out the tired old body before he, Botts, can return to it. And just how is he supposed to get back into his body, anyway?
Slim Cody works in the movie industry, doubling for the performers. He has a dream in which he portrays Romeo in a movie version of "Romeo and Juliet," and arranges for someone to double for him when the fight scenes get scary. ....
As a man travels down to New Orleans for the winter, he finds out a robbery will be taken place on Christmas night in a plantation. he helps a girl by making it available for her to marry her boyfriend.
Peep O'Day, an orphan in a small Kentucky town, falls heir to a small fortune and begins to make up for all the lost pleasure of childhood, but Sublette, a crooked attorney, arranges for an eastern belle to show up as Peep's "niece" to steal his fortune.
A naive young Swede is repeatedly victimized by predatory women. When finally he meets a young woman who seems sincere and true, he wonders if he can trust her.
Slaving to perfect an invention, Noah Vale tries to keep two orphans--Rip and Patch--and himself by peddling books and is helped by Scallops, a girl who occasionally brings them food. He appeals to Fay, a wealthy relative, for help in marketing his invention and arouses the interest of Fay's pretty daughter. Sterrett, Fay's partner, steals the model but returns it when he discovers it to be worthless. Johnny Smith, Fay's secretary, is fired when he proposes to the boss's daughter; and visiting Vale's attic, he is comforted by his epigrams. Johnny takes them to a newspaper editor, and they are so successful that both Smith and Vale are hired. Vale decides to give up inventing for writing, and Johnny marries Miss Fay despite her father's opposition.
Happy-go-lucky Jim Fenton is in love with Miss Butterworth, the town milliner, who is taking care of little Harry Benedict while his father Paul, an inventor, is in the local insane asylum. Miss Butterworth convinces Jim that Belcher, one of the town's prominent citizens, has incarcerated Paul to steal the patents from his inventions. Jim breaks into the asylum and spirits away the enfeebled inventor......
Cowboy Billy Fortune is in love with Hope Beecher, who prefers Billy's friend Ben Morgan, but resists his advances because of his fondness for drink. Hope's discontent is echoed by the town wives' public outcry against drink. To divert their interest, Billy is nominated to make love to their leader, widow Fay Bittinger, who has already disposed of four husbands....
Honest Arizona rancher Sam Gardner, goes with his motherless son Billy to the city, where he is cheated out of ten thousand dollars by a band of crooks. Taking up residence in a boardinghouse where he meets Jane Ingraham, Sam decides that the only way to regain his losses is by gambling. To achieve this, he makes friends with gambler Kittie Hinch who takes him to Jack Bloom's gambling house. When Bloom begins flirting with Hinch's wife Florry, the injured husband kills his rival and the evidence points to Sam as the killer. Jane tries to provide him with an alibi, but fails. Just as things look grim for the rancher, a wire arrives from Hinch, now in Mexico, confessing to the crime. His faith in mankind thus rewarded, Sam is free to marry Jane
Alec Lloyd, the foreman of the Sewell ranch, is nicknamed "Cupid" because of his propensity for matchmaking. When Macie Sewell returns from boarding school, Cupid himself falls victim to love, but Macie has aspirations to go to New York and become an opera singer, and so ignores his advances. However, Leroy Simpson, a poor doctor who is enamored of Macie's father's money, encourages her ambitions....
Ort Hutchins is a confirmed loafer who spends all of his time fishing while his wife toils over the washtub. One day, while digging for worms, Hutch uncovers a box containing $100,000 in bills, the loot of a bank robbed in the next town. Realizing that he cannot spend the money without arousing suspicion, Hutch resigns himself to taking a job for cover. ...
A New England schoolteacher arrives in a small Southern town. He becomes the savior of several local people in time of emergency, including a young who is oppressed by the unwelcome romantic intentions of a local ne'er-do-well. The teacher pretends to marry the girl to fool the unwanted suitor, but then finds that the marriage was inadvertently legal....
Jubilo, a tramp, makes himself useful doing odd jobs in a small farming community while he looks for the wife who deserted him while he was off in the war. He discovers that young Rose is his own daughter and not the daughter of prominent Judge Hardy, with whom Jubilo's wife had run off years before....
Convict Bill Hyde and his friend, Danny Dorgan, break out of prison, but in running from the guards, Danny is mortally wounded. The local doctor, Evan Thomas, tries so hard to save Danny that later, when Bill and the doctor meet in Alaska, the two become friends. A dying man gives his mine to the doctor, but upon discovering that it is worthless, Bill sells it to a crook named John Wesley Slayforth...
