The Romance of an American Duchess

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

When an in-flight collision incapacitates the pilots of an airplane bound for Los Angeles, stewardess Nancy Pryor is forced to take over the controls. From the ground, her boyfriend Alan Murdock, a retired test pilot, tries to talk her through piloting and landing the 747 aircraft. Worse yet, the anxious passengers — among which are a noisy nun and a cranky man — are aggravating the already tense atmosphere.

Marcia Grey is wrongly convicted on trumped-up evidence of a German. After serving her term, she rebuilds her life and marries well.

A compilation featuring comedic stars of the silent era including Fatty Arbuckle, Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Charley Chase, and Laurel and Hardy.

Socialite Anatol Spencer, finding his relationship with his wife lackluster, goes in search of excitement. After bumping into old flame Emilie, he lets an apartment for her only to find that she cheats him. He is subsequently robbed, conned, and booted from pillar to post. He decides to return to his wife and discovers her carousing with his best friend Max.

John Harms, a corporation magnate, has two motherless sons, Bobby and Sam. Bobby is a cute little youngster of six, and Sam is of age and spends his father's money with recklessness. Richard Freely, an arch-enemy of Harms', is continually trying to dissolve the corporation, and not until Newton, a half-brother to Freely, has forged some checks on a good friend of Harms', does the financier secure a wedge with which to ruin Freely. Harms threatens to expose his enemy for defending Newton, and Freely is saved from bodily injury by Bobby, who has come to ask his father for candy. Meantime Sam has forged his father's name to a check and handed it to Newton in payment of gambling debts. Harms is about to sacrifice his son to down Freely, when the little "Buffer' again bursts in and drags Sam away to play horse.

A grouchy landlord discharges a kind-hearted rent collector for failing to collect the rent from an impoverished widow. After dreaming that he himself is experiencing the sordid experiences of being destitute, the old man sees the error of his ways and becomes suddenly charitable.

A young woman chooses to enter the convent after losing her lover.

Mary's kid brother needs an operation and, in order to pay for it, Mary goes to a Hollywood studio and applies for a job as an actress. Mary is given a job as a waitress in the commissary, and gets to meet 40 actors, actresses and directors, none of whom tip big enough to enable Mary to earn enough money to pay for an operation. Will Mary become an actress and make some big money?

Jacqueline Floriot is driven from her home by her husband Louis, a deputy attorney of Paris, because of his unjust suspicions regarding her relations with another man. Floriot forbids Jacqueline to see her baby boy, who is dangerously ill, and when informed that the boy believes her dead, she attempts suicide.

Because her father breaks her engagement to a young man, Jane, a spoiled girl of luxury, retires to a country hospital of which her father is a director, in order to sulk and give vent to her feelings.

In this comedy-drama, May Allison plays Teddy Hayden, a very independent society miss. When her childhood sweetheart, Gerry West (Wallace MacDonald) takes her to a Greenwich Village cafe, she thinks she's found where she belongs. So she spends all her time there and gets herself in a load of trouble.

Laura Bruce is married to John Bruce, police commissioner. She discovers her husband is enjoying a drunken revel with another woman, and vows she will obtain a divorce. After doing so she weds Paul Ramsey. His employer, Dick Turner, a libertine, offers his a responsible position in the west, and she faces a long separation. Ramsey later learns that Turner is interested in his wife and engages a man to protect her, who happens to be her former husband.

A young girl, Peggy Warren (Dorothy Revier), raised in expensive boarding schools, discovers that her mother, respectable Katherine Warren (Ruth Stonehouse) also leads a second life as the notorious Texas Kate, Queen of the New York nightclubs. She leaves home ashamed of how her mother paid for her expensive schooling. A reconciliation re-unites mother and daughter after the mother saves her from a loveless marriage.

Greg Hamilton, a young artist, decides to go east and try his fortune. He finds his work unappreciated, and is unable to earn a living. One day while strolling in the park with his wife, Helen, he saves a little girl's life by stopping her runaway horse, but breaks his finger in doing so. He is then unable to paint, and is forced to take a position in a factory, but tells his wife that he is writing stories for a magazine. A few days later, Helen tells him she has accepted a position as governess. Things go on nicely, but one day they discover they are both employed in the same factory but in different departments.

In the hills of Kentucky, Alexander McGivens, known as "the girl in pants," is reared by her father as if she were a boy. When her father, Aaron, is wounded in a fight with Bud Sellers, the girl undertakes to get her father's logs to market with the help of a crew from the lumber camp. Her numerous suitors include a young Irishman, Jerry O'Keefe, roughneck Jase Mallows, and a wealthy young easterner, Jack Halloway. After delivering the logs, she entrusts her money to the repentant Bud Sellers, and on her return trip she is captured by Mallows and his followers. She finally reaches home, where she offers her hand to O'Keefe, the soft-spoken mountaineer.

Most of the scenes are laid in a parrot-and-monkey country in South America, a land where "it is always after dinner." The Llano Kid, a Texas bad man, flees there from justice. The consul persuades him to play the long-lost son of a Castilian family, and tattoos a coat of arms on the back of the Kid's hand to make the deception complete. The Kid is taken into the household, trusted and loved by the gladdened mother. For the first time he has a home. The romance develops. And when the time comes to rob and flee he has too much manhood to break the loving mother's heart. The surprise comes when it is revealed that the man the Kid killed in Texas was the real son.

Impressed with Margaret Hill's singing ability, Al Levering takes her from the notorious dive in which she is performing and pays for her musical education. Just as she is about to join an opera company, Levering is arrested for embezzlement and Margaret, out of gratitude, promises to marry him when he is released. Later, Margaret meets and falls in love with nobleman John Ordham. Separated during a shipwreck, the two lose track of each other and five years pass, during which time Margaret has become a famous opera star.

Sir Joseph and Lady Webbing are the foster parents of Marie-Louise. The couple are also in league with Verrinder, a German spy. When their work against England is discovered, they commit suicide. Marie-Louise, who has been an unwitting part of their schemes, is allowed to go to the U.S. if she promises to keep everything a secret.

Letty Shell, a clerk in a London brokerage office, is discouraged by her lack of fine clothes and social position. She becomes infatuated with Nevill Letchmere, a debonair idler from a good family, and believes that he wants to marry her, but after her boss, Bernard Mandeville, who has risen to power and wealth, and who wants to marry Letty, warns Letchmere to keep away from her, Letchmere confesses that he is married. Disappointed, Letty accepts Mandeville's proposal, but when she sees Mandeville's boorishness in a restaurant, she returns to Letchmere. Just as she is about to become his mistress, Letchmere receives word that his married sister has eloped with a lover. When he curses his sister for acting like a "shop girl," Letty realizes that he views her and her class without respect. She leaves and accepts the love of her faithful friend Richard Perry, a poor photographer, whose rich uncle is going to help him in business

A physician advises Helen Blair to seek a different climate. She is without money. Philip Cobb, her daughter's sweetheart, tells them his employer, Richard Standing, has refused him an increase. Thus Mrs. Blair discovers the whereabouts of Standing, whom she rejected years before to marry Blair. Standing treats her savagely when she appeals to him. His son, John, overhears the conversation and, seeing the girl, forces them to take the necessary funds to save the mother. The father discovers his love affair and sends him to Honolulu. The jealous Cobb gets a letter from a friend there and forges a new note telling that young Standing has become a drunkard. Ailene and Cobb are married. John Standing returns after months and he and Ailene learn of the deception. Cobb repents his deceit and drowns himself.

Based on the first centenary of the largest exporter of films in the world, that is Hollywood, is the story told by its protagonists, actors and writers and other people who made life in this business, interspersing images of famous movies.

In the mid-1950s, Dickson Hughes and Richard Stapley, young composers and romantic partners, are hired by legendary silent film star Gloria Swanson to write a musical based on her film Sunset Boulevard, directed by Billy Wilder in 1950.

A look at the past, present and future of Hollywood as seen through the eyes of the movie columnist.

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.

On seaside holiday, Nero, Poppea, Seneca and their friends and family prepare a great show where Nero will star. When his mother Agrippina arrives with her German praetorians and decides Nero has to conquer Britain, she's asking for trouble. Many attempts of murder and poisoning will happen on the eve of his great show.

Kathleen Clifford, a wealthy widow, is undecided whom to marry. Ralph Fenton, a man of her own age, or George Rosslyn, a youth in his twenties.

Russell Shirley calls on Harriet Gorman, to whom he is engaged, and they happily plan for their wedding, which is to take place in a few days. On the night of the wedding the guests are assembled and the minister is half through with the ceremony, when Russell suddenly discovers that the ring with which to seal the marriage is not on his person and is nowhere to be found.

A heroic lawman rescues Midge Blair from a runaway stage. Returning to town, Jerry is assigned to safeguard a valuable shipment of platinum.

O'Day, the terror of Red Gulch, wins the entire stake of a gambler named Granger in a poker game but gives it all to Denver Nell, a dancehall girl, when she tells him her sad story. O'Day later discovers that she has returned the money to Granger, and he decides to reform. He goes to another town, where (now known as Good Deed O'Day) he meets an old friend, a wealthy rancher with whose sister, Mary, he is in love. Snowden takes a trip to Denver and returns with Nell, whom he has married.

Connie McGill, a scullery maid at the Valentines, dreams of better things. One day, while serving, she sees her Prince Charming, Prentice Blue. Although Blue has nothing but his social standing, the nouveau riche Nathaniel Flint wishes his daughter Helen to marry him in order to gain family status. Flint gives a big party for Helen, which attracts the attention of the Du Geen band of crooks. In a scheme, they furnish the unsuspecting Connie with proper clothes, transforming her, and she ends up at the party dancing with Blue, who is enchanted with her. As she departs, she accidentally leaves her slipper with Blue. Unknown to her, she has aided the crooks in stealing jewels that night, and her slipper contains the key to Flint's safe.

The Man Without a Face is a 1928 American adventure film serial directed by Spencer Gordon Bennet.

When a wealthy man is found murdered in his bedroom, one of his two adopted sons is arrested and charged with the killing. However, the verdict at his trial is an acquittal. Since the police don't seem to be particularly interested in finding the real killer, the dead man's daughter-in-law--the wife of the adopted son who wasn't charged--takes it upon herself to solve the crime.

Inheriting a fortune allows Harry Lathrop to indulge in extravagant spending and wild wine parties with chorus girls, decides to change his ways after his childhood sweetheart, Betty Dalrymple, gives back her engagement ring because he arrives drunk for dinner.