Cinematic Era: Before 1950 Vintage

Figaro the cat wants to eat Cleo the goldfish in this Pinocchio short.

René Sabin, engineer, disappointed by failures, leaves his village in the South to go to Paris with friends. In the capital, he befriends dubious people, in particular Alex Krakow who does not disdain shady business. Then comes the war. René is mobilized then returns to the country, and finds with joy his fiancée.

Peggy Raymond, a country girl, comes to New York with plans for a career in art and is taken by mistake to a Fifth Avenue address where she meets Dick Merwin, the scion of a wealthy family, whom she mistakes for her cousin. Later, in Brooklyn, she finds that her relatives have moved, and Mabel Hines takes her in and gets her a job. By necessity, Peg is forced to demonstrate fat-reducing rollers in a shop window, where she is unfavorably viewed by Mrs. Schuyler and her husband. She is admired by Sam Billings, a wealthy old bachelor, and becomes involved with Maddox, who affects an interest in her paintings. But through a series of reversals and complications, Peg is made to realize that Dick is the worthier man.

A businessman goes home early to surprise his family and is treated with suspicion, mostly by his wife's bridge club.

U.S. Marshal Wild Bill Hickok arrives in Goldfield to arrest Tex Martin, who has been accused of murdering the sheriff. "Hawk" Hammond, the man behind the sheriff's killing, sends his legions of henchmen to lynch Tex before the trail. Wild Bill and Tex escape to a stagecoach rest station run by Reba Bailey. There is a showdown battle at Hammond's saloon but not before Tex gets to sing two songs followed by a third one after the battle.

Bill Saunders, a former prisoner of war living in England, whose experiences have left him unstable and violent, gets into a bar fight in which he kills a man and then flees. He hides out with the assistance of a nurse, Jane Wharton, who believes his story that the killing was an accident.

With her marriage on the verge of breaking up, a young wife attempts to win back the love of her husband and child.

The life story of Aleksis Kivi, author of the first Finnish novel in Finnish language and (posthumously) its most successful writer.

A repairman falls in love with a blacksmith's daughter, who's having trouble with their greedy landlord, and helps them get one over on him.

A bible publisher is falling in love with a chorus girl and finds himself backing a Broadway show.

Classic holiday tale about a flying reindeer who helps Santa Claus. An interpretation of Robert L. May's 1939 Christmas poem, this animated short was created to run in theaters to advertise Montgomery Ward department stores, publisher of the original story.

Fired for messing up an important contract, Dagwood takes a job as a manual laborer for a construction firm while trying to get his old job back.

Pola is a beautiful but poor girl, a locksmith's daughter. Unexpectedly, she's successful as a stage dancer. After her success, she breaks with her fiancé and becomes the lover of a rich admirer. However, the fiancé does not accept her departure.

On the way to his wedding the bride groom finds a nude, married woman in his car

Mickey Mouse conducts an orchestra, while the rest of the Disney menagerie of the era provides a dance recital, with Horace Horsecollar as stage manager, and Pluto continually sneaking on stage.

Two men shipwrecked on an island in the Caspian Sea are saved by members of a collective farm, where they work on its fishing boats and woo the young woman leading the fishermen.

Georg Jacoby’s Jokeren is a light-hearted entertainment picture set during the carnival in Nice, a romantic comedy with a touch of melodrama. A young artist, fatally injured in a car accident, foolishly entrusts a batch of compromising love letters to Borwick, a crooked and unscrupulous lawyer, instructing him to destroy them. Instead, Borwick proceeds to blackmail the woman who sent the letters, Lady Cecilie Powder, married to the straight-arrow Sir Herbert Powder. Lady Cecilie gets help from her spunky younger sister Gill. In turn, she draws in Peter Carstairs, a debonair adventurer known to all as “the Joker” – the card that trumps all others. When the Joker repeatedly foils Borwick’s schemes, the crooked lawyer ups the ante, trying to incriminate his adversary Carstairs and expanding his demands to include marriage to Gill. But as the characters converge at yet another lavish carnival celebration party, it becomes clear that one card does indeed trump all the others: the Joker!

This one starts differently but, in the end, it is another version of Robert Emmett Tansey's oft-used plot of "employing bad guys as good guys to help the good-good guys capture the bad-bad guys." The warden of the Desert Wells Penitentiary asks Tex Reed and Slim to check the series of bank robberies which have been committed by escaped convicts. Lockwood, head of an opposing political machine, is behind the escapes and robberies, and the escapes are being planned by Red, a convict. Tex trails the next escapee but the hang shoots the man before Tex can question him. Jimmy, brother of Tex's girl friend Mary, is set up, by the gang, to be killed while robbing a bank by Carter who will collect a reward for shooting him. Jimmy is wounded but not killed and Tex arrests him to keep him safe. The gang now wants to get rid of Tex, so they send Red, dressed as a prison guard, with a fake message from the Warden for Tex.

A former Fascist takes his son and escapes across the border into France, where he tries to avoid being recognized and having to pay for his wartime crimes.

Businesswoman Claire King is the daughter of a powerful advertising executive. When Claire marries humble copywriter Bill Landin, she wants to use her influence to help her husband get ahead, but he will have none of it.

A patriotic, cinematic salvo, this wartime production tells the story of the owner of a shipbuilding company doing his best to contribute to the British fleet. War is good for business, but what will happen once the war is won? It was based on a novel by George Blake.

Women in Bondage is a 1943 World War II film about conditions for women under Hitler's regime. The plot involves two women imprisoned for speaking out against the government. It was directed by Steve Sekely and starred Gail Patrick and Nancy Kelly.

A landslide has diverted water from the Baldwin ranch to Cambert's. With their cattle dying, Cambert refuses to let them have any water. Easterner Larry Knight takes a job with the Baldwins and he has a plan to divert the water back to the Baldwin ranch. But Phil, jealous of Kitty's attraction to Larry, lets Cambert know of the scheme.

The Progressive Party convention is deadlocked for governor, so both sides nominate the dark horse Zachary Hicks. Kay Russell suggests they hire Hal Blake as campaign manager; but first they have to get him out of jail for not paying alimony. Blake organizes the office and coaches Hicks to answer every question by pausing and then saying, "Well yes, but then again no." Blake will sell Hicks as dumb but honest. Russell refuses to marry Blake, while Joe keeps people away from Blake's office. Blake teaches Hicks a speech by Lincoln. At the debate when the conservative candidate Underwood recites the same speech, Blake exposes him as a plagiarist. Hicks is presented for photo opportunities and gives his yes-and-no answer to any question, including whether he expects to win.

During WWI pretty German master spy Helene von Lorbeer is sent undercover to London to live with the family of a high-placed British official where she is to rendezvous with the butler Valdar, also a spy, and help him transmit secret war plans back to Germany.

A pampered heiress (Madeleine Carroll) elopes with a shipboard reporter (Fred MacMurray) just to get her name in a society column.

In this comedy, a pair of ex-Marines team up and get involved in a nightclub. Trouble ensues when they both fall in love with a feisty woman and begin fighting over her.

The hapless king of a small European nation must put up with a domineering queen, a daughter who wants to elope with her boyfriend, a peasant revolt and a scheming general.

On the run after being found sweet-talking the Sultan's daughter, Aladdin comes upon a lamp which, when rubbed, summons up Babs the genie. He uses it to return as a visiting prince asking for the princess's hand. Unfortunately for him, the sultan's wicked twin brother has secretly usurped the throne, someone else is after the lamp for his own ends, and Babs has taken a shine to Aladdin herself and is bent on wrecking his endeavours.

An amusing bowling match between Messrs. Sauer and Kraut. The balls and pins are manipulated by an electric magnet and perform some queer antics. There is, of course, the usual roughhouse finish, with Ford and Mabel in the important parts. Good fun, without offense.

Little Johnny Jones, to be born in the next year, is shown growing to a ripe, healthy old age, thanks to the efforts of his local public health officers. But without them, he might be one of the 5% or so that dies in the first year. The price for the public health service: about 3 cents a week. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2005.

Story of an investment agent who embezzles a large sum from an estate, hoping to cover his crime by marrying the estate's heiress. The girl is already engaged, so he arranges to have the fiance killed. A mix up involving the society section of the newspaper places him in the sights of his own hired gun.

A milquetoast trucker is bullied by his domineering wife.

Charley Chase has car trouble.

This John Nesbitt's Passing Parade series short highlights the film preservation efforts of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Several scenes from early newsreels are shown.

Tom Mitchell is an insurance investigator and Fire Capt. Joe Dugan is chief of the police department's arson troubleshooters. Tom and Joe team up to solve a particularly vicious series of deliberate fires. A man has been killed in one conflagration, so the villains have a murder rap hanging over them.

In the office of Major Northfield, the quartermaster of the Pacific Coast, a leak has been discovered which may endanger the safety of American transports that are secretly carrying troops across the Pacific. Nara-Nara, a Japanese detective, is assigned to the case because his country has guaranteed safety to these transport ships. Nara-Nara believes that Northfield is guilty, although in reality it is Northfield's secretary Kitty Little, a girl of German ancestry, who is passing information to Dr. Ebell Smith, a German agent. Nara-Nara falls in love with Kitty, but soon after discovers that she is the leak in the quartermaster's office.

Harvard senior Sam Thatcher and his best friend and roommate, known as "The Lippencott", plan to go to Russia after graduation, a decision Sam has kept from his girlfriend, Alexandra Benson.

The few residents left on the streets in Tokyo share their individual stories and come to understand the melancholy of saying goodbye.

The stooges are bumbling electricians who decide to go away for a rest after they are fired for their incompetence. The rest home they choose is run by Dr. Mallard, a quack who gyps the patients for everything they've got. When the boys discover the crooked goings on they escape, but not before Curly accidentally cures another patient who rewards him with a thousand dollars.

The stooges are pest exterminators, mistakenly hired by a rich lady looking for an escort to a fancy society party. The stooges wreck the fancy mansion where the party is taking place and befuddle the guest of honor, an English Lord.

Paddy O'Riley and Ossie Merrill, Bellport high school football heroes, enroll in distant colleges; Paddy at a small school in the East, where he is barely a substitute, and Ossie at a powerhouse-football school, where he is an instant star and all-American candidate. They leave behind Cheers Reynolds, who is fond of Paddy, who works in her family's drugstore, but she loves Ossie almost as much as he loves himself. Paddy makes friends with team fullback Dutch Schultz, who accompanies him on vacation, and they arrive back in Bellport just as Ossie is also coming home on break. Florence Taylor is also in town on a film junket. Unknown to any of the others, Paddy and Florence had gone to high school together. Back at school and three years later, Paddy and Dutch learn that their football team could get invited to the coveted Rose Bowl to play against Ossie's team, if it could get enough publicity (pre-BCS days) that would attract a large crowd...

Remake of the 1917 film of the same name. A young chiropractor is tricked by a tall, homely girl into marriage, but he ducks out the morning after the honeymoon. Months go by and he learns that his bride has become a mother. Obliged to his responsibilities, he returns. however, it's just another ruse, with three borrowed babies and a midget dressed as one standing in for his new children.

Bucharest, 1876. Don Dumitrache instructs his trusted man, Chiriac, to watch his young wife, Veta. Dumitrache is sure that Veta having an affair, she does not know is that her lover is Chiriac own...

An inventor of a deadly weapon to be used against the allies is injured in a crash. Surgeon, Sir James (Sebastian Shaw) saves his life but learns of the inventors plot.

After inheriting a New York City art gallery, bookie Milton Berle and his partner Cesar Romero decide to go into the art forgery business. Director Ray McCarey's 1942 comedy also stars Carole Landis, J. Carrol Naish, Steven Geray, Richard Derr, Rose Hobart, Elisha Cook Jr., Chick Chandler, Francis Pierlot and Jerome Cowan.

A story about a family after the Second World War. The petty bourgeois cashier Karl Weber of Berlin observes from a distance how his son Ernst participates in the building of a new socialist society. Karl does not understand Ernst's visions, instead he confides in his other son Harry. However, Harry becomes involved in illicit business and Karl quickly realizes that it would be best to join his son Ernst in the citizen-owned factory.

A romance between a struggling composer and an American singer.

An ex-convict tries to connect with the daughter who doesn't even know he exists.

In 1820s rural England, a young girl is tricked by tales of marriage from a villainous Squire. When she becomes pregnant and disappears, a gipsy lad is blamed.

An ignorant and prejudiced American’s visit of Soviet Russia goes off the rails after his luggage is stolen and he is separated from his bodyguard.

Carolyn Martin is a fashion model who hastily marries her boyfriend, engineer Michael Martin. But part of the marriage arrangement requires that Carolyn quit her $50-per-week modeling job to be a full-time housewife; the couple will instead live on Michael’s $35-per-week job.

The Patent Leather Kid is a 1927 silent film which tells the story of a boxer who scoffs at fighting outside the ring... particularly for the United States once it enters World War I. Eventually, he is drafted, is shipped overseas, and performs a heroic act, which results in his being severely wounded.

A millionaire vacationing in Mexico falls for a local girl and sets out to win her. This is a reworking of Keaton's 1936 feature The Invader (An Old Spanish Custom).

At the Elk's Head Hotel bellhops torment the lobby, each other and guests. The elevator is powered by a stubborn horse. A sham robbery turns into a real one. And there is a chase on a runaway trolley.

Based on Lyon Feuchtwanger's novel about the tragedy of society, through a look at the tragedy of one single family.

A team of two-fisted insurance investigators (one of whom disguises himself as The Masked Marvel) endeavor to discover and thwart the loathsome saboteur Sakima.

Disney Short about Pablo the Penguin and his journey to find a warm place.