Little Mary Sunshine

In the continuing saga of the Corleone crime family, a young Vito Corleone grows up in Sicily and in 1910s New York. In the 1950s, Michael Corleone attempts to expand the family business into Las Vegas, Hollywood and Cuba.

In the early days of daylight bombing raids over Germany, General Frank Savage must take command of a 'hard luck' bomber group. Much of the story deals with his struggle to whip his group into a disciplined fighting unit in spite of heavy losses, and withering attacks by German fighters over their targets.

A group of disillusioned American expatriate writers live a dissolute, hedonistic lifestyle in 1920's France and Spain.

Stanley Ford is a successful cartoonist and happily single. That is, until he gets drunk at a friend's bachelor party and impulsively proposes to the beautiful woman who pops out of the cake. Once sober, he regrets the decision, but she won't agree to a divorce. Stanley jokingly vents his frustrations in his comic strip by having the main character kill his wife. But when his actual wife goes missing and Stanley is arrested for her murder, he has a change of heart.

Writer Harry Street reflects on his life as he lies dying from an infection while on safari in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro.

In 1858 Lourdes, France, adolescent peasant Bernadette has a vision of "a beautiful lady" in the Massabielle grotto - the townspeople assume this lady to be the Virgin Mary. Pompous government officials think the girl is insane, doing their best to suppress her and her followers, while the church wants nothing to do with the matter. But as Bernadette attracts wider and wider attention, the phenomenon overtakes everyone in the town, ultimately transforming their lives.

King David enters into an adulterous affair with the beautiful Bathsheba, which has tragic consequences for his family and Israel.

Erstwhile childhood friends, Judah Ben-Hur and Messala meet again as adults, this time with Roman officer Messala as conqueror and Judah as a wealthy, though conquered, Israelite. A slip of a brick during a Roman parade causes Judah to be sent off as a galley slave, his property confiscated and his mother and sister imprisoned. Years later, as a result of his determination to stay alive and his willingness to aid his Roman master, Judah returns to his homeland an exalted and wealthy Roman athlete. Unable to find his mother and sister, and believing them dead, he can think of nothing else than revenge against Messala.

Molly, her brother, Slats, and his pal, Oliver, are taxi dancers at the Miramar Ballroom. As a publicity stunt, Slats plants an article about Molly claiming her ambition is to earn enough money to attend staid, all-girl Bixby College. Bixby's progressive dean offers Molly a scholarship. Molly accepts on the condition that Slats and Oliver come along too as campus caretakers. But the pompous Chairman threatens to foreclose on the school's mortgage if Molly isn't expelled. Together, the trio, with the help of some new friends, concocts a scheme to raise enough money to save the school. The plan involves a bet on the Bixby basketball team, which is playing in a game rated at 20 to 1 by the local bookie. But the bookie has other plans for their dough and hires a group of ringers to step in for the opponents. All is not lost, at least while Oliver has the chance to turn things around for his friends-one way or another.

After a love triangle results death, St. Elmo falls from grace and is eventually redeemed in this now lost silent film based on the best selling novel by Augusta Jane Wilson.

Jim Lassells travels to Africa to obtain proof that his cousin Harold Brooks is dead as rumored, and learns that an Algerian sultan killed the rich American. Since it is assumed that Brooks was childless, Jim inherits his cousin's fortune. At a slave market he buys a young girl named Perdita and sends her to a convent in Corsica to be educated. Years later, Jim meets Perdita again while traveling through Corsica with the impecunious Duchess of Westgate and her daughter, Lady Lilah Grey. When the party stops at an inn, Jim discovers that Perdita is not only a Persian princess, but also the long-lost daughter of Brooks, and therefore the rightful heir to Brooks' fortune.

A young woman of wealth revenges herself on a young author whose peculiar ideas about women have led him to act and speak in an insulting manner. This young man isolates himself in the mountains for the purpose of writing a story on the primitive woman, where he is discovered by his friends, to whom he vows that no woman shall cross his threshold. The mischievous young woman of the story, determined to place him at her feet, goes secretly to the home of a mountain woman with whom she lives in the guise of a wild girl of the hills. Purposely sliding over an embankment where she knows she will fall in his path, she is rewarded by having him pick her up and carry her to his cabin, where she pretends to be too much injured to be moved that day. The mountain woman is sent for and the two remain in the cabin of the author for several days. Finally she is discovered by her people, when it also comes to light that the woman-hating author has fallen to the charms of his pretty visitor.

During World War II, all the studios put out "all-star" vehicles which featured virtually every star on the lot--often playing themselves--in musical numbers and comedy skits, and were meant as morale-boosters to both the troops overseas and the civilians at home. This was Universal Pictures' effort. It features everyone from Donald O'Connor to the Andrews Sisters to Orson Welles to W.C. Fields to George Raft to Marlene Dietrich, and dozens of other Universal players.

Traveling saleswoman Mary Marbury thrashes a masher on a train when he tries to kiss a young girl in a tunnel.

John Oxford owns a gambling hall in an Alaskan mining town, but it known far and wide as an honest man. However, one day he finds that in order to save the life of Doris Henry, who has come to Alaska to marry Wallace Towers, he has to cheat. It turns out that Wallace has incurred huge gambling losses and is being threatened by those to whom he owes the money, and they in turn are threatening Doris--who mistakenly blames John for the predicament that she and Wallace are in.

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.

Football player John Kent tags along as Huck Haines and the Wabash Indianians travel to an engagement in Paris, only to lose it immediately. John and company visit his aunt, owner of a posh fashion house run by her assistant, Stephanie. There they meet the singer Scharwenka (alias Huck's old friend Lizzie), who gets the band a job. Meanwhile, Madame Roberta passes away and leaves the business to John and he goes into partnership with Stephanie.

In March 1916, Pathé released a short feature entitled Little Mary Sunshine, starring a four-year-old Marie Osborne. This was one of the first features ever directed by King and it was so successful that Pathé asked the original production company, Balboa, for five more features with the same child wonder. All were produced during the second half of 1916, and only three of them survive today – one being Twin Kiddies, which shows the amazing progress King had made since the first film in the series. Of course, the story is thin, the ending quite abrupt, and the opening sequences rather long. Yet, the direction is much more subtle, alternating between shots of different size, suggesting that King was mastering the art of composition.

John Logan leaves bucolic Happy Valley to make his fortune in the city. His parents and his sweetheart become miserable and beleaguered in his absence, but after several years he returns wealthy. However, his embittered father, not recognizing him for who he is, plans to murder the newly-arrived 'stranger' for his money.

When Barton Baynes's mother and father die, his Aunt Deel and Uncle Peabody provide a home for him. He grows up with Amos Grimshaw, son of a miserly moneylender who holds the farmers of the area in his power, and falls in love with Sally Dunkelberg.

Who Pays? was a series of twelve three-reel dramas, released between March and July 1915. Henry King and Ruth Roland starred in each episode, playing different roles each time, with a variety of supporting players who varied from one episode to another. Each episode told a complete and individual story, but they were all inter-related by a uniform theme. Although there were no cliff-hanger endings, each episode did, in fact, end with a challenge to the audience: Who was responsible for the misfortune of the principal characters? The titles of the twelve episodes were: #1: The Price of Fame; #2: The Pursuit of Pleasure; #3: When Justice Sleeps; #4: The Love Liar; #5: Unto Herself Alone; #6: Houses of Glass; #7: Blue Blood and Yellow; #8: Today and Tomorrow; #9: For the Commonwealth; #10: Pomp of Earth; #11: The Fruit of Folly; #12: Toil and Tyranny.

A cop, who plays by his own rules, brings down a notorious gangster.

John spies his girlfriend embracing his brother. Stunned, John deposits the family's money and leaves the country. Years later he returns to find his brother dead, the plantation in ruins, and that he is suspected of stealing the money.

Aspiring singer Ann Carter visits her stepbrother in New York, hoping to make it on Broadway.

Although her husband and children want to continue living modestly after they acquire a fortune from munitions, Mrs. Tompkins has social aspirations and persuades them to move into an exclusive country neighborhood and send their son Dick to Yale. When Mrs. Tompkins mistakes Louise Allenby, the daughter of her aristocratic neighbors, for a maid, Louise in jest pretends to be the Allenby social secretary. Dick, returning home, hears some girls giggling about Louise's joke on the Tompkins family and for revenge he becomes a groom for the Allenbys, but he and Louise fall in love. During a party, swindler Cholly Van Dusen steals some of the Allenby jewels and blames Louise who is put under arrest until her parents return. Cholly is then caught, Louise and Dick with revealed identities announce their love, and the Tompkinses are accepted socially.

A sailor and his would-be bride search their train for a clergyman to marry them.

Traffic cop Larry Hayes takes care of four-year-old Mary Jane, the daughter of Gus Andrews, a criminal sent to prison because of Larry, and Nellie, a shop girl who visits often.

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.

James Sterling, wealthy bachelor, is told by his doctor that he must go up into the mountains if he would recover the health lost in his midnight parties. He goes, leaving behind Clarice Driscoll, a society girl whom he loves. In the mountains he meets Lucy Bingham. Away from the city influences, he falls in love with this maid of the wilds

Fatty leaves his country home to go to the city. Bess, who lives in the city with her mother and her detective father, takes a novel and goes to the park to read, and strikes up a flirtation with Fatty. The father goes to his office, while the mother purchases a watch as a birthday present for him, but she is seen by a crook, who follows her. When she stops in the park to rest he gets the watch. On his way out of the park the crook passes Fatty and sells him the stolen watch. The crook then tries to flirt with Bess, but is thrown out by Fatty, who has fallen in love at first sight and is invited to Bess's home, after he has made her a present of the watch. When Bess and Fatty enter the house the mother is out in the hall telephoning her husband about the loss, and he starts home immediately. Bess leaves Fatty while she shows her mother the watch he gave her. The mother recognizes the watch and starts for Fatty, being joined later by her husband.

A spoiled young rich girl is forced by misfortune to fight for survival in the slums and alleys, where she becomes involved with all manner of unpleasantness.

To remove forever anything that will remind him of his dream of happiness that was shattered by his wife's infidelity, Stanley sends his infant daughter Nan to be cared for by a woman named Hopkins. He sends money regularly for her support but never visits her. Nan is treated as a slave and never receives any of the money intended for her.

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.

Millionaire John Huntley-Knox, the owner of the Boston Star, fights political corruption with the aid of William Wendell, the reform district attorney.

Erma Desmond leaves her uncle and aunt to visit a friend, Phyllis, in the city. There, she finds work as the companion to the highly temperamental Mrs. Stanley. Mrs. Stanley has terrorized her husband to such an extent that he has gone away for a few months, purportedly to take their daughter to school, but mainly to get some peace. The servants, however, are still victims of her terrible fits until the day she decides to head for Reno to get a divorce.

In the dry west, Louise MacLeod works as a secretary for Robert Powell, a lawyer defending businessman John Phelan, whom the ranchers accuse of monopolizing water rights. Louise's father, Gordon, is one of the ranchers, and so Louise keeps him informed of Robert's strategy, resulting in the ranchers winning their case.

Jim Douglass arrives in the small town of Rio Arriba in order to witness the hanging of the four men he believes murdered his wife. When the convicts escape, Jim tracks them into Mexico, determined to see that justice is done. But the farther Jim goes in his quest for vengeance, the more merciless he becomes, losing himself in an unrelenting spiral of hatred and violence.

When notorious pirate Henry Morgan is made governor of Jamaica, he enlists the help of some of his former partners in ridding the Caribbean of buccaneers. When one of them apparently abducts the previous governor's pretty daughter and joins up with the rebels, things are set for a fight.

After railroad agents forcibly evict the James family from their family farm, Jesse and Frank turn to banditry for revenge.

The fastest gun in the West tries to escape his reputation.

Harry's father is killed in a gunfight, and his mother makes him swear he'll never again use his gun, and rely only on his bare fists. But when his little brother is branded on the chest by cattle rustlers, will Harry break his promise?

In Southern California during the Mexican regime, Don Marcello, son of the territorial governor, returns home to find that his father's secretary, Mendozza, has seized power. The coup arouses the anger of the revolutionary faction, which forms an alliance with Don Marcello.

Minor member of a Boston law firm, Donald Joseph Blenhorn goes to Mexico to investigate Dorothy Charlton's fiancé, Hugh Hankins, who must meet approval of the firm representing her father's will. Blenhorn appears in Mexico disguised as rancher Don Jose, a Mexican aristocrat, and discovers that Hankins is a cad and coward.