The Valkyrie

George Bailey has spent his entire life giving to the people of Bedford Falls. All that prevents rich skinflint Mr. Potter from taking over the entire town is George's modest building and loan company. But on Christmas Eve the business's $8,000 is lost and George's troubles begin.

Middle-class housewife Kay Miniver deals with petty problems. She and her husband Clem watch her Oxford-educated son Vin court Carol Beldon, the charming granddaughter of the local nobility as represented by Lady Beldon. Then the war comes and Vin joins the RAF.

Longfellow Deeds lives in a small town, leading a small town kind of life. When a relative dies and leaves Deeds a fortune, Longfellow moves to the big city where he becomes an instant target for everyone. Deeds outwits them all until Babe Bennett comes along. When small-town boy meets big-city girl anything can, and does, happen.

Snooty opera singer meets a rough-and-tumble fisherman in the Louisiana bayous, but this fisherman can sing! Her agent lures him away to New Orleans to teach him to sing opera but comes to regret this rash decision when the singers fall in love.

The artistic cyclist Gaumont, his girlfriend Baptista, and their partner Rosa arrive in town with their travelling circus. Rosa is secretly in love with Gaumont, and to her great delight, she gets the opportunity to travel alone with him when Baptista gets injured and is bedridden. The two of them grow closer in secret, but the clown Pierre, who has set his sights on Baptista, gossips about the lovebirds for his own gain, thus igniting a fatal thirst for revenge in the betrayed. Stumfilm.dk

Audrey Munson (a real-life 'perfect' model for numerous Beaux-Arts sculptors) first appeared artistically nude as a sculptor's model, recreating classic artistic (nude) paintings in George Foster Platt's controversial film from the Mutual Film Corporation. In fact, the film told the story of her own life. This film has generally been regarded as the first non-pornographic American film to feature nudity. This was the first known film in which a leading actress stripped down to be naked, making her the first nude film star. (filmsite.org)

In the home of the stalwart young son and his mother, the girl rescued from the sea grows strong again after her fearful exposure. Her attractiveness, so different from that of the fisher maidens, has a telling effect on the young man. He asks her, at length, to become his bride, and she accepts. But a few days before the wedding the affianced bride disappears, sailing away with a strange man from the city, who has suddenly appeared. Thinking that his sweetheart had deserted him for another, the fisherman is heartbroken for a time, but gradually the keen edge of his sorrow wears away, and he succumbs to the attractions of another girl, one who had recently come to the village with her father, and who had lived together and alone at the end of the town.

An aging King invites disaster, when he abdicates to his corrupt, toadying daughters, and rejects his loving and honest one.

An American lawyer's wife is reunited with her child and his father, an English nobleman.

In "The World and the Woman", Jeanne Eagels plays Mary, a prostitute (which is implied by her walking the streets and being hassled by policemen) who reluctantly takes a better position at a country lodge as a maid. In this woodland community, she attends church and the path to Salvation becomes clear to her. Through Mary's faith, the injured folk of the countryside are healed. However, her old employer, whose lustful advances she'd previously spurned, still has designs on her.

After having been wrongly accused of murder and robbery, a heretofore kindly and gregarious weaver becomes a nasty, bitter, lonely old miser. Originally a seven-reel picture, a three-reel re-release survives.

The Thanhouser Co. has reissued a number of its surviving films on video. FIRES OF YOUTH existed at around 52 minutes in its original release. A shortened version running just over 31 minutes has survived at the George Eastman House and has now been released by Thanhouser. Jeanne Eagels does well as the neglected young daughter in a factory town. She appears in 22 scenes and delivers a sensitive performance.

The Thanhouser Company's two-reel adaptation of Oscar Wilde's eponymous novel. “The plot is unusual, and even though none of the familiar epigrams of the author find their way into the subtitles there is an artistic flavor to the production. Dorian's picture shows evidence in the passing years of his selfish, dissipated life, though his own countenance remains unchanged. Harris Gordon handles the leading role effectively, and Helen Fulton was pleasing as the ill-fated young actress who won Dorian's heart." - The Moving Picture World, July 31, 1915.

Based on Browning's poem, a widowed Duchess raises a son that decides to abandon modern ways and act like it's the medieval days. When he wishes to marry, a young woman is found and plays along believing it's all a joke.

To raise funds for the American effort in The Great War heiress Betty Hallowell decides to lease her beautiful country house to Mrs. Wentworth, a wealthy widow whose son Tom is recuperating from injuries received overseas. When Mrs. Wentworth suddenly demands the services of a maid for the summer, Betty, unable to secure a servant on such short notice, dons a dark wig and poses as "French maid Bettina." Tom and “Bettina” fall in love much to his mother’s dismay but when the deception is finally revealed all ends well.

On his way to visit his fiancée, the young man saw her on the front steps in earnest conversation with a stranger. The stranger took the girl's hand, mounted his horse, and rode away. Instead of waiting for an explanation, the girl's sweetheart angrily demanded one. Hurt by his attitude, she refused to give it.

The Long Arm of the Secret Service

Convicted in a revolutionary conspiracy, a man rashly states that he wishes never again to hear the name of the United States of America. The judge grants him his wish, sentencing him to life aboard a ship always at sea, aboard with sailors under orders never to let him hear of his homeland in any way. The punishment nearly destroys him, while changing him thoroughly.

With younger brothers and sisters to support, Peggy takes on the task-heavy job as maid for Mrs. Stuyvesant. Peggy also manages to help the woman's children, a lovelorn daughter and a son who is the unwilling tool of spies.

An optimistic girl survives city life as a shoe shine till she ends up in children's court. Just as she helps her geranium, Sally, to grow, a kindly judge sees her potential and takes her to his mother's country home to flourish.

The boys get jobs as a butler and maid-- Stan in drag-- for a dinner party. When that ends in disaster, they resort to sweeping streets and accidentally capture a bank robber. The grateful bank president sends them to Oxford, at their request, and higher-education hijinks ensue.

Small-town soda-jerk Peggy Evans quits her dead-end job and moves to New York where she invents a new identity.

The popular artist Frank Harvey has been offered a job in America. On the voyage across the Atlantic, Harvey catches sight of the captain’s beautiful daughter, and the two quickly become good friends. However, a fire breaks out in the ship’s hold, and while the crew struggles to put out the flames, Harvey has to keep the passengers calm with his very best performances, and pray for his and the lives of others. (Stumfilm.dk)

A PR man talks a swanky hotel into hiring his girlfriend's brother as chef.

A good example of the clever light comedy Thanhouser produced for its Falstaff label, while other studios cranked out broad slapstick comedies. Harry Benham and Mignon Anderson were versatile and popular Thanhouser stars, here showing considerable skill in light comedy, a genre that invites plenty of satirical social observation such as the burgeoning beauty-salon industry here. Cinema technique shows much more intricate editing and freer use of closeups than just a year or two earlier.