Life's Darn Funny

Songwriter Mack Gordon introduces flagpole sitter Shipwreck Kelly, who hoists some girls aloft with him and shows them sights around Hollywood.

Angela comes to Hollywood with only two things: Her dream to become a movie star, and Grandpa. She leaves an Aunt, a brother, Grandma, and her longtime boyfriend back in Centerville. Despite seeing major movie stars around every corner, and knocking on every casting office door in town, at the end of her first day she is still unemployed. To her horror, when she arrives back at their hotel, she finds that Grandpa has been cast in a movie by William DeMille and quickly becomes a star during the ensuing weeks. Her family, worried that Angela and Grandpa are getting into trouble, come to Hollywood to drag them back home. In short order Aunt, Grandma, brother, boyfriend and even the parrot become superstars, but Angela is still unemployed...

Shane O'Mealia leaves Ireland, promising to send for his sweetheart, Moyna. In the mean time the son of the old lady she lives with, takes them back to America without telling Shane, who then must explain a girl he's been seeing in New York.

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.

Antonio Camaradino, florist and street musician, befriends a man robbed of his overcoat and money in a disreputable bar. Tony recognizes the man as Jorny, mayor of Avalonia, a straitlaced town where Tony was once arrested for playing his hurdy-gurdy. After this meeting, Tony's travels take him again to Avalonia. Camped on the outskirts of town, he meets June Ramsey, a cousin of the mayor's wife, ejected from town by the mayor because his reelection campaign is jeopardized by her having been seen in a roadhouse. Under considerable pressure because he wishes to conceal his previous encounter with Tony from the opposition, Jorny returns Tony's favor by asking June's forgiveness and inviting her to return to Avalonia. June accepts his apologies; she then follows Tony, with whom she has fallen in love.

Young bride Patricia Morley's flirtatious ways at a summer resort keep her husband Henry in a state of continual anxiety. At an old-fashioned barn dance, Patricia enacts the role of a chicken breaking out of an egg, and Henry's wrath explodes. After accusing her of being in love with another man, Henry returns to New York and files for divorce. Heartbroken, Patricia sends her friend Victoria French to tell Henry that she is dying.

The Jazz Age rages in this comedy film starring Viola Dana as the madcap title character madly dashing through a series of adventures.

Happy O'Brien, called "The Microbe," or "Mike" for short, a female street urchin who sells newspapers dressed as a boy to avoid harassment, is saved from arrest for fighting other newsboys in Chinatown by wealthy author DeWitt Spense. DeWitt, there to purchase drugs, is so moved by Mike's pugnacity, that he takes her to his mansion for literary inspiration. When DeWitt learns that Mike is a girl, he resolves to educate her. As Mike blossoms, DeWitt's attentions turn to love, to the dismay of Judith Winthrope, who wants to marry him, and his friend Robert Breton, who, with Judith, convinces Mike that DeWitt's writing is suffering because of her.

A publicist for a racy burlesque troupe romances the daughter of the head of The Purity League, an organization that wishes to see such shows banned.

Working as a wardrobe girl in a cheap traveling stock company, Mamie Judd secretly loves Jenks, the leading man, who scarcely notices the young girl. She saves Neal Selden, son of a small-town banker, from being accused of robbery and murder, acts committed by the company's manager and leading lady.

When Marie Callender is left a fortune by a wealthy old admirer on the condition that she marry the man she loves, Marie targets Ernest Lismore but is too shy to ask him to marry her. Instead, Marie disguises herself as an elderly woman of considerable wealth and offers to bail Ernest out of his impending bankruptcy in exchange for marriage, with the understanding that if Ernest ever falls in love with another woman she will grant him a divorce. Then Marie disguises herself as June Dayne in order to make her husband fall in love with her. She succeeds, and when Ernest confesses his love for another woman, Marie discards her disguise and Ernest discovers that the woman with whom he is in love is his own wife.

In 15th century France, a gypsy girl is framed for murder by the infatuated Chief Justice, and only the deformed bellringer of Notre Dame Cathedral can save her.

When a teacher reads an essay written by Morgan Evans, one of the boys, moved by his rough poetry she decides to hold classes in her house and believes that Morgan is smart enough to attend Oxford.

Set in the years before and during World War I, this epic tale tells the story of a rich Argentine family, one of its two descending branches being half of French heritage, the other being half German. Following the death of the family patriarch, the man's two daughters and their families resettle to France and Germany, respectively. In time the Great War breaks out, putting members of the family on opposing sides.

Tom Mix plays Tim, a goodhearted cowpuncher who, while riding down a trail, gets robbed of the money he was carrying for the Belgian Babies' Milk Fund.

Bob Gilmore, a young clubman, is called by telephone to his home, where his parents are giving him a birthday party. He overhears one of the men guests make a slurring remark about his mother's appearance, and proceeds to punish him then and there, throwing the entire gathering into an uproar. Later in the evening he assumes guilt for a check which had been in reality forged by his foster father, in order to save the mother's feelings, but obtains a written confession from the guilty man for future use if necessary. Learning that he had been adopted from a foundling asylum in infancy, Bob decides to go to New York to see if he cannot learn his real name, which he understands begins with "Mor."

Glory Quayle and John Storm, sweethearts since childhood on the Isle of Man, go to London, Glory to become a nurse and John to enter a monastery. Instead, Glory becomes a theater star, and John renounces his vows because he cannot forget his love for her. Lord Robert Ure, who has already betrayed Glory's friend, Polly Love, incites the London populace against John....

Now hear this. The studio that gave the cinema its voice offered 1929 audiences a chance to see and hear multiple silent-screen favorites for the first time in a gaudy, grandiose music-comedy-novelty revue that also included Talkie stars, Broadway luminaries and of course, Rin-Tin-Tin. Frank Fay hosts a jamboree that, among its 70+ stars, features bicyclers, boxing champ Georges Carpentier, chorines in terpsichore kickery, sister acts, Myrna Loy in two-strip Technicolor as an exotic Far East beauty, John Barrymore in a Shakespearean soliloquy (adding an on-screen voice to his legendary profile for the first time) and Winnie Lightner famously warbling the joys of Singing in the Bathtub. Watch, rinse, repeat!

After leaving Sing Sing for serving time for theft, The Boy drifts into a small Pennsylvania town and falls in love with Marie, an innocent local girl. The Boy leaves for New York, first obtaining Marie's promise to follow him in a week to become his wife. The Boy runs into some of his former associates in crime, however, and they hold him prisoner until they can pull off a big job. Meanwhile, Marie arrives in the city, and there is no one to meet her. Ashamed to return home, Marie supports herself by prostitution until she is reformed by a kindly priest, who, unknown to her, is also attempting to help The Boy, who has become a dope fiend. The Boy and Marie finally meet and are reconciled. The priest then sends for her parents, and Marie and The Boy are married.

When a woman's husband is presumed dead in the war, her sister, for her own unscrupulous reasons, attempts to get her remarried. But the husband, it seems, is not dead after all.

The Spanish Dancer is the story of Maritana, a Romani girl who dances in courtyards and even tells people's fortunes. Despite her lowly position, Maritana wishes to be a Countess. Her ambitions are realized when she meets the handsome Count Don Cesar de Bazán, if only the King of Spain would stay out of their way!

A spoiled young girl manages to snag a wealthy older man as her husband but soon becomes bored. She finally leaves him but doesn't really know what she wants. A young man who is a friend--and, unbeknownst to her, an admirer--takes her in.

Part of a 7-part series exploring all aspects of Hollywood.

Comrades is a 1928 American silent drama film directed by Cliff Wheeler.

A man comes by a map that shows the location of a secret treasure, but runs afoul of a criminal organization known as the "13". Chapter ten, eleven and twelve are still missing from this 15 episode serial.

Kate, whose father, a university graduate, died when she was very young, is adopted by her tenement neighbor, Mrs. McMahon, after her mother, a woman of refinement, dies. At ten, the ill-nourished girl, who has grown up watching her drunken foster father fight with her overworked foster mother, goes to work in a factory after Mr. McMahon loses his job. During the next eight years, Kate's stepbrother, Big Bill McMahon, becomes her friend, sweetheart and protector.

A documentary of Hollywood's first great Latin Lover, the contradictions in his personal life, and his premature death.

Movie serial Perils of the Wild

A corrupt art patron finds himself in love with the same girl as his stepson.

After a forward introduces the question of whether women are temperamentally suited for jury duty, Jim O'Neil, a young shipping clerk, is found holding a revolver over his dead employer, Edward Knox. The celebrated novelist Grace Norton, selected to be on the jury at Jim's trial, becomes the first woman juror in New York.

Johnnie Gains, son of a farming couple, is industrious and imbued with a spirit of sacrifice. Rejected for military service because of an eye injury, he enlists in the Salvation Army.

The Northwest Mounties are after Cheyenne Harry for the murder of an Indian boy, and the only witness to the crime is a priest - who can't tell what he saw because the real killer, Black Michael, has confessed to him.

Pierre Winton promises to avenge his father's killing at the hands of McGuirk, the bandit. While hunting for McGuirk, Pierre comes upon Mary Brown who has been badly injured in a rock slide. They fall in love, but while attempting to rescue Mary, Pierre is trapped and rendered unconscious in another rock slide. Saved by Jim Boone's band of outlaws, Pierre joins the gang, and Boone's daughter Jackie falls in love with him, but, Pierre still loves Mary, from whom he has been separated.

Sheldon Polk's father, a wealthy banker, agrees to make a loan to Frank Farnsworth. Sheldon is robbed while delivering the money and is arrested for theft on circumstantial evidence.

In New York's Little Italy, Carlotta's life is run by Black Hand leaders who will not let her see her sweetheart Tom. The Black Handers also control the life of prominent Judge Andrews, because years before, after the death of Andrews' daughter, they kidnapped his granddaughter. Only now have they agreed to return her, at a charity ball, for a large ransom.

The former gambler turned upholder of law and order after a run-in with a gang of stage robbers.

Roy Thomas tries to obtain evidence of smuggling to prevent his father from ending up in jail.

During World War I, German spies were even capable of infiltrating a Tom Mix Western!

A fire engulfs a shipload of prospectors and adventurers making their way to Alaska. In the confusion, Mrs. Stanlaw is separated from her young daughter, who ends up in the care of 'Horseshoe' Riley and Bob Dexter.

Desperate because a wealthy man has reduced her father to thievery, Rhoda agrees to rob the poor box of the church, although she finds the act abhorrent.