A Bit of Jade

In the Salinas Valley in and around World War I, Cal Trask feels he must compete against overwhelming odds with his brother for the love of their father. Cal is frustrated at every turn, from his reaction to the war, how to get ahead in business and in life, and how to relate to his estranged mother.

A hack screenwriter writes a screenplay for a former silent film star who has faded into Hollywood obscurity.

After World War I, Armistice Lloyd Hart goes back to practice law, former saloon keeper George Hally turns to bootlegging, and out-of-work Eddie Bartlett becomes a cab driver. Eddie builds a fleet of cabs through delivery of bootleg liquor and hires Lloyd as his lawyer. George becomes Eddie's partner and the rackets flourish until love and rivalry interfere.

Mi Taylor is a young wanderer and opportunist who finds himself in the quiet English countryside home of the Brown family. The youngest daughter, Velvet, has a passion for horses and when she wins the spirited steed Pie in a town lottery, Mi is encouraged to train the horse.

After the death of a United States Senator, the idealistic Jefferson Smith is appointed as his replacement in Washington. The naive and earnest new senator soon finds himself battling political corruption.

After fierce Roman commander Marcus Vinicius becomes infatuated with beautiful Christian hostage Lygia, he begins to question the tyrannical leadership of the despotic emperor Nero.

A Broadway artiste turns a faded film star's comeback vehicle into an artsy flop.

Dr. Jekyll believes good and evil exist in everyone and creates a potion that allows his evil side, Mr. Hyde, to come to the fore. He faces horrible consequences when he lets his dark side run amok.

Two thieves, who travel in elegant circles, try to outsmart each other and, in the process, end up falling in love.

A newlywed fears she's going mad when strange things start happening at the family mansion.

Timeworn Joe Collins and his fellow inmates live under the heavy thumb of the sadistic, power-tripping guard Captain Munsey. Only Collins' dreams of escape keep him going, but how can he possibly bust out of Munsey's chains?

The story of a poor young woman, separated by prejudice from her husband and baby, is interwoven with tales of intolerance from throughout history.

Joe and Paul Fabrini are Wildcat, or independent, truck drivers who have their own small one-truck business. The Fabrini boys constantly battle distributors, rivals and loan collectors, while trying to make a success of their transport company.

The O'Leary brothers -- honest Jack and roguish Dion -- become powerful figures, and eventually rivals, in Chicago on the eve of its Great Fire.

After a drunken night out, a longshoreman thinks he may have killed a man.

Genial shopkeeper Philip has to endure the constant nagging of a shrewish wife while he secretly yearns for a pretty young stenographer. When the henpecking gets to be too much, Philip murders his wife and manages to make her death look like an accident. A ruthless blackmailer and a low-key detective both discover Philip's secret, and he has to decide which of them poses the more dangerous threat.

A beautiful but vain woman who rejects the love of her older husband must face the loss of her youth and beauty.

A young crown prince, wishing to be just an ordinary boy, runs away with his friend. The king dies, and when the prince does not appear, the people begin to rise in revolution. When the crown prince finally hears the death knell for the late king he immediately attempts to return to the palace, however is abducted by revolutionaries and held captive. Will he be rescued in time to restore order?

In the year 1550, Sir George Vernon agrees to have his young daughter Dorothy betrothed to John Manners, the son of the Earl of Rutland. Sir George signs a contract, promising that the marriage will take place on Dorothy's 18th birthday, or else he will have to pay a large penalty to Rutland. But when the two children have grown older, rumors of John's wild behavior in France provoke Sir George to call off the engagement, and to pledge his daughter instead to her cousin Malcolm. Rutland now claims the forfeit from Sir George, and meanwhile, John has befriended Mary Stuart, the sworn enemy of Elizabeth, who is now Queen of England.

Orphan Mary Wade, is the ward of a family of farmers who keep her busy with drudgery. Mr. Jenkins, the head of the household, makes advances to Mary, she flees to the city with her dog Zippy and lands in court for imitating a beggar who pretends to be blind.

When spiritualist Madame Mysteria is killed in a train wreck, her three associates decide to replace her instead of declaring her dead. One of them, the Fox, calls on Jean Oliver, who he knew from prison. Jean was serving time after being framed by her former employer, Mrs. Ramsey, for a theft just to keep her and her son, Donald Ramsey, from marrying. Jean agrees to the crooks' scheme providing that they help her kidnap the baby that belongs to Donald and the woman that his mother had him marry.

On a desolate beach near a lifesaving station, Ira, the youngest member of the lifeguard crew, rescues a baby girl from a wreck. The child is cared for at the station, where the men christen her Periwinkle. Living near the station are Ephraiam Rawlins and his childless daughter Ann, a widow with maternal longings. Joyously, Ann takes charge of Periwinkle and raises the girl as her own. Grown to adulthood, Periwinkle is the bright spot for the men at the station. One day, Richard Langdon Evans, a dissolute, wealthy young New Yorker, is cast ashore from the wreck of his yacht. Periwinkle, aiding the lifesavers, helps bring him back to life. Her innocent goodness and faith transform Dick from a carousing society ne'er-do-well to a man of noble ambitions. Thus rehabilitated, Dick wins Periwinkle's hand in marriage.

Helen continuously looks for reasons to doubt Dick, causing friction in their young marriage. Her jealousy intensifies when Dick seems to pay more attention to Alma's ankles than the curtains she is hanging. A series of misunderstandings continuously fan the flames of Helen’s jealousy. The final straw occurs when Helen walks in and catches Dick and Alma in what looks like an incredibly compromising position. Believing her marriage is over, Helen threatens to file for a divorce. However, Alma’s actual fiancé arrives just in time to clear up the confusion, explain the innocent context of the situation, and completely reconcile the newlyweds.

Mary Lane and her cousin Claiborne want to sell some land left to them by their family. Real-estate agent Roland Manning falls in love with her, and prepares a deal that will make money for both of them. However, shady land speculator Wade Dempster plots to get Claiborne drunk and swindle him out of the land. In order to get the honest Roland out of the way, he has him framed for a murder that Wade himself committed. Things look hopeless for Roland.

Viola Drayton (Minter) has a fascination for fairies, but real life intervenes when her father, a colonel (W.T. Carleton), is called off to the European War (that's what they called World War I in early 1915). He leaves Viola in the care of the Nevisons (Herbert Wilke and Ina Brookes) and gives them thirty thousand dollars to invest on her behalf. When word arrives that Drayton has been killed in battle, Mr. Nevison takes Viola's money for himself, but he squanders it and his wife has to take in boarders. Viola hates her life at the Nevisons so she runs away and gets a job at a theater playing...a fairy.

Charity and her young brother are taken in by Merlin Durand, the son of a penurious millionaire, when their mother, a poor cleaning woman, dies. Charity is a strong believer in the world of fairy tales, and calls Merlin "The Prince". Merlin's cheapskate father cuts off his allowance until he gets a job and earns a salary, then leaves home for a "water cure". His servants immediately take a vacation, leaving the house empty, so Charity and Merlin hide there until Merlin can find a job. Charity begins to call the mansion "Charity Castle". They soon wind up involved with a strange cast of characters, including a burglar and an unemployed Shakespearean actor.

A small-town girl returns home from schooling in the East to find that her father's small store and indeed the whole town are in danger of being eliminated by a ruthless land developer. The developer has a son who falls for the young girl, and together they try to come up with a plan to save her father's store and the town.

Wild young Ann Anderson keeps getting expelled from boarding schools because of her passion for pulling pranks. She is finally enrolled at Madame D'Arcy's Finishing School.

Young and wealthy Molly Allison can't be "presented" into society until her older sister Julia is married, but that doesn't stop Molly from pursuing her usual wild ways. She finds herself in turn pursued by Count Renaud, unaware that he is a criminal interested in swindling her out of her money. To discourage the Renaud's attentions--and because she already has a boyfriend, Billy Wilcox--she tells Renaud that she is actually an Indian squaw who is just living in the Allison household. That doesn't stop the Count, however, and he turns his attentions to Molly's sister Julia.

Young Janet Barnes is dumped by her fiancé Ernest Morgan for Suzette Sparks, who comes from a wealthy family. Enraged, Janet sends him a photo of the elaborate and elegant mansion next door, implying that it is actually her home. Ernest replies that he and his new wife want to visit there during their honeymoon.

The residents of a small town are excited when a flaming meteor lands in the hills, until they discover it is the first of many transport devices from Mars bringing an army of invaders invincible to any man-made weapon, even the atomic bomb.

A brilliant but deranged neurosurgeon becomes obsessively fixated on a judge's daughter. With the help of an escaped criminal whose face he has surgically deformed, the mad man lures her, her father, and her fiancé to his isolated, castle-like home.

Two hit men walk into a diner asking for a man called "the Swede". When the killers find the Swede, he's expecting them and doesn't put up a fight. Since the Swede had a life insurance policy, an investigator, on a hunch, decides to look into the murder. As the Swede's past is laid bare, it comes to light that he was in love with a beautiful woman who may have lured him into pulling off a bank robbery overseen by another man.

In this epic Western, Wade Hatton, a wagon master turned sheriff, tames a cow town at the end of a railroad line.

Young Irish physician Peter Blood is exiled as a slave to Barbados, where he and his friend Jeremy are purchased by Colonel Bishop at the behest of his niece Arabella. With other slaves he captures a Spanish galleon and becomes the terror of the Caribbean privateers until offered a commission in the English Navy. He defeats the French at Port Royal, and as a reward he is named governor of Jamaica and marries Arabella.

Famous Hollywood Scandals and Tragedies

Before the G, PG and R ratings system there was the Production Code, and before that there was, well, nothing. This eye-opening documentary examines the rampant sexuality of early Hollywood through movie clips and reminiscences by stars of the era. Gloria Swanson, Mary Pickford, Marlene Dietrich and others relate tales of the artistic freedom that led to the draconian Production Code, which governed content from 1934 to 1968. Diane Lane narrates.