Widow by Proxy

Genevieve arrives at the Hubbard farm in New York State in a chauffeur-driven limousine, bringing along her maid, her pet dog, and custom-made silk overalls modeled after Russian ballet attire. She eventually adapts to the labor and falls in love with Bob Hubbard, the farmer's youngest son. However, when Bob enters an army training camp, he finds military life distasteful and goes AWOL to return home. Genevieve successfully persuades Bob to return to his post and fulfill his duty. Though their initial secret meeting leads to Genevieve being sent away by the elder Hubbard, Bob eventually obtains a leave of absence to clear her name. He becomes a resolute soldier, and the two resolve to marry once the war is over.

An elderly business tycoon, believed to be dying, decides to give a million dollars each to eight strangers chosen at random from the phone directory.

A canal boat captain disowns his daughter when she marries a circus performer. Years later he is reunited with the granddaughter he never knew.

Having a municipal position, Bernard Ingals has almost bankrupted himself sending his three children to college. The youngsters all arrive home for Christmas Eve, and their parents do their utmost to give them a good time, but the thoughtless and selfish children make other plans and go to a party, leaving their parents to a lonely dinner. A member of the common council arrives at the Ingals home and orders Bernard to reinstate a municipal employee who has been dismissed; Bernard refuses and submits his resignation. The grandmother, a strong-minded old lady, then sets out to put things right: she stakes Bernard to his life-long dream, a greenhouse of his own, and then lectures the children on their thoughtless and profligate ways. The children reform and get jobs, and the goose hangs high at last.

The search is on for a bank robber's hidden stash in a house they all say is haunted.

His Majesty, Bunker Bean is a 1925 silent film comedy directed by Harry Beaumont and starring Matt Moore. It is based on a 1916 play, His Majesty, Bunker Bean by Lee Wilson Dodd, taken from a novel Bunker Bean by Harry Leon Wilson. It was produced and distributed by Warner Brothers.

He Learned About Women is a 1932 American Pre-Code comedy film directed by Lloyd Corrigan and written by Lloyd Corrigan, Ray Harris and Harlan Thompson. The film stars Stuart Erwin, Susan Fleming, Alison Skipworth, Gordon Westcott, Grant Mitchell and Sidney Toler. The film was released on November 4, 1932, by Paramount Pictures

Living in Cuba with her parents and grandmother, Inez Hastings, does not care for Lavendera, her persistent suitor. Contrary to her father's wishes, she attends a cockfight and makes the acquaintance of Rush Thompson, a United States revenue officer assigned to track down Cuban bootleggers. Their romance awakens the jealousy of Lavendera, who attempts to kill Rush.

Fifi is an actress in Napoleon-era France. She wins a lottery and leaves Cartouche, the man she loves to go live with a rich family. The conniving Louis Bourcet tries to woo her because he wants her money. But Fifi wants nothing to do with him, and ultimately she gives up her money and returns to Cartouche. But Cartouche, believing he is too old, refuses to marry her until Napoleon himself orders him to do it.

In his will, Mr. Baird leaves his son Arnold just one seven-passenger auto and a hundred dollars to keep it filled up and in good repair. When James Bennett hears of this, he insists that Baird do something to make his fortune before he can marry his daughter Ruth. Bennett begins by using the car to start a jitney-bus line. This is not terribly impressive to Bennett -- who owns a trolley company -- and he decides he would rather see Ruth married to his controller, William Mott-Smith.

A lost film. A girl with old-fashioned values becomes a modern sophisticate.

A Belgian countess escapes to America to avoid a loveless marriage and finds romance and adventure in a mountain village in Tennessee.

Three men, disillusioned in love and intent on getting away from all women, rent a cabin and retreat there. But the young woman who owns the cabin, unaware that it has been rented, is on her way there to escape from an unhappy engagement.

Fernande de Ferney, a young French girl, has spent her time between the convent and the country home of her uncle, where she has learned to passionately love Roger, the son of the Marquise de Monclars. He marries her for her fortune, but does not value what he has so lightly won until she profits by the lesson taught in the little marionette play written by their friend, Nizerolles, and finds that men are much like marionettes.

PEG O MY HEART (Metro Studios, 1922), directed by King Vidor, under the supervision of J. Hartley Manners, introduces the legendary theatrical actress Laurette Taylor (1884-1946) to the screen reprising the role she made famous as a poor Irish farm girl who inherits a fortune but would rather have happiness instead. While a bit too old for the character supposedly in her late teens or early twenties, Laurette was tailor made for it.

A rancher moves to the city, and finds competition for the affections of an heiress in the form of a doppelganger.

When Tourneur adapted the allegorical plays The Blue Bird by Belgian symbolist Maurice Maeterlinck and Prunella by British playwrights Harley Granville Barker and Lawrence Housman in 1918, they had been successfully staged for many years, opening in Moscow and on Broadway and everywhere. Today, the saccharine charm of these anti-modern fairy tales doesn’t work any more. But undistracted by the meaning or action of the film, we can enjoy the surface of Prunella all the better, the dazzling sets and costumes, silhouettes and painted backdrops created by the great art director Ben Carré in a fashionable Art Déco Neo-Rococo style.

Olivia Dangerfield and her brother are hired as servants in the household of the meticulous Mrs. Falkner. When another pair of servants is detained by the law, Olivia decides to pose as a master cook, though she knows little about the culinary arts. Meanwhile, Burton Crane, the boyfriend of Mrs. Falkner's daughter, becomes attracted to the "wonderful cook" at the Falkner home.

An Eastern drifter stakes a claim near Boiseville but spends his nights gambling away his gold. Moll, one of the owners of the gambling hall, tries to help him quit the habit. When is neighbor, Peter Gardner teams up with Moll’s partner, Dick Weed, to try and steal the claim, Moll (who is secretly the drifter’s mother) and Gardner’s daughter, Kate, who is in love with the drifter, attempt to stop them. Gardner nearly succeeds in winning the drifter's claim in a card game, but an amnesiac named Crazy Oby suddenly regains his memory, recognizes Gardner as the man who robbed him years ago, and shoots him. Before dying, Gardner confesses that Oby is Kate’s real father. With the villains defeated and the truth revealed, the drifter and Kate find happiness together and prepare for their wedding.

Pepita, a radiant and merry Spanish beauty, and her playful brother Jose, witness their mother, whose faded beauty led her husband to abandon her for another, plunge a dagger into her breast.

Chronic liar Berenice Somers and her friend Alice, skip school to see a matinee, however, the two girls must think quickly when they see Alice's parents, Judge and Mrs. Altwold. Trying to escape, they run into the hotel room where young diplomat Cleverley Trafton is staying. Alice's parents find them, however, and are shocked that two young women would be in a man's room. Undaunted, Berenice says that she is Cleverley's wife, and that Alice simply had been visiting. Going from hostile to hospitable, the Altwolds then insist that Berenice and Cleverley stay with them. Cleverley is unable to argue his way out of the situation, and both he and Berenice are embarrassed at having to spend the night together. They soon realize, however, that they have come to like each other, and so, deciding to change Berenice's lie into the truth, they begin making plans for their marriage

The Duchess of Aragon is wooed by King Ferdinand VII of Spain, much to the displeasure of his mistress Countess Veya, who forces the Duchess out of Spain and into Puerto Rico, where she is forced to behave in very unladylike manners, such as riding horses like a cowboy, and dueling with and fending off various brigands and bandits.

She'd wink till hearts went on the blink. And staid professors couldn't think. And everywhere they'd stop to stare. And say "Some Chink!" when Ming Toy winked.

Bab comes home for the Christmas holidays. Given to fabrications, Bab has been keeping a diary in which she describes and imaginary boyfriend named Harold Valentine. Imagine what happens when a real Harold Valentine shows up as her parents' house guest.

Monty Gray returns to the US after spending 10 years building railroads in China. As he enters a hotel he runs into an old friend from college whom he hasn't seen in years, and they begin catching up on old times. Monty notices a picture of a young woman that his friend is carrying and, bowled over by her beauty, he instantly falls for her.

"Bat" Peters, reformed gunfighter turned prospector, travels to Chicago to collect on a business deal with a mine promoter who turns out to be crooked.

A young wife slaves for her cad of a husband. When she learns that he has been "stepping out" with his secretary, she gets revenge by going after the attentions of her husband's employer.

When a famed matador is forced to become an outlaw, he seeks to get revenge on the dancing girl who betrayed him.

A young Italian immigrant girl, uneducated and superstitious, finds an abandoned baby on the stairs of her tenement, with a note attached explaining the baby is illegitimate. A young newspaper reporter, whom the girl knows from waiting on him at the restaurant where she works, reads the note for her. But the police arrest her, at no evidence whatsoever other than possession of the baby, for kidnapping.

Convict Tom King is pardoned from a life sentence when he courageously helps other prisoners during a fire. He then goes to live with his brother Matthew, the hated mill owner in a depressed town, and his own son Max, who was brought up by Matthew to believe his father was dead.

Wastrel New York millionaire Roland Van Dam travels to New Orleans during Mardi Gras, looking for adventure and romance. Because the costume he is wearing includes a red gardenia, he is mistaken for escaped prisoner Emile Le Duc by a woman (who turns out to be a long-lost cousin) who was to meet Le Duc, who was to be wearing a red gardenia. It turns out that Le Duc is the head of a vicious gang of counterfeiters, and Roland winds up getting in more adventures than he had hoped for.

Veteran action hero William Russell starred opposite his offscreen wife Helen Ferguson in this typical Fox oater about a miner who finds himself up against a master swindler (George Webb).

In order to be admitted to his school fraternity, David Bruce is told to impersonate a Balkan prince. In that guise, Bruce leaves for the prince's tiny municipality. En route, he becomes involved with a gang of anarchists who order him to kill the prince he is supposed to be impersonating.

John Marshall, young engineer, goes to Bullis Valley in the Alabama hills to secure lands for a big power project. The hill folks think he is a revenue spy and plans are laid against his life.

Kent Hollis has arrived in Dry Bottom, New Mexico to settle the affairs of his dead father. But when he discovers that the town is at the mercy of "Big Bill" Dunlavey and his crew, he decides to stick it out at dad's old ranch for a spell.

May Blossom loves Richard Ashcroft, a Southern officer, and accepts his proposal of marriage immediately after receiving one from her father's choice, a suitor named Steve Harland, who loves her madly. She sorrowfully tells him she prefers Richard, nearly breaking Steve's heart. That night, without a chance to bid May good-bye, Richard is arrested

Philo Vance investigates when a murderer preys upon members of a wealthy family on New York's Upper East Side.

A young wild girl, Fanchon, lives in a forest with her eccentric grandmother who is suspected by the villagers of being a witch. The unkempt Fanchon suffers from her grandmother's sorceress reputation. One day the girl rescues a boy from drowning and they fall in love, but Fanchon won't agree to marry him unless his father asks her. A year later the boy has fallen very ill and it is only the presence of the enchanting Fanchon that helps to restore his health.

When rich civil engineer Robert Penfield goes to a small Quaker town in Pennsylvania to supervise a job, he meets Patience, who soon falls in love with him, but Robert is engaged to Edith, who plans to marry him for his money only. To remain close to Robert, Patience returns with him to the city to take a job as his mother's secretary.

Aspiring actress Elizabeth Dalston, after rehearsing a murder scene for a movie, is fired by her director at the request of the company's Wall Street backer, Sylvanus Power. Although married, Power plans to make Elizabeth his mistress and offers the unsuspecting girl a dramatic education in England, to be followed by his building a theater for her. Traveling across England after school, Elizabeth witnesses a fight between two brothers, Philip and Douglas Romilly, which ends in Douglas' supposed death. On the steamer to America, Philip, disguised as Douglas, confides in Elizabeth that he was fighting to persuade Douglas not to leave his pregnant lover. Elizabeth believes him and in New York they fall in love. After she convinces Power to produce Philip's play, both the play and her acting are hits. When Power propositions Elizabeth and discovers her passion for Philip, he summons Scotland Yard detectives, but Douglas reappears and clears Philip. Power then graciously admits his defeat.

Mrs. Pitman seeks a wealthy husband for her daughter, Virginia. The first prospect, Colonel Singleton, insults Virginia and is shot by her brother. They move, assume another name, and find a new suitor, Clayborne Gordon, who changes his mind when he learns of Virginia's past. She then tells her story to poor racing-driver Cole Hawkins, whom actually she loves. He not only accepts her but reveals himself to be one of the wealthiest men in the area.

Richard Forrest's philosophy of marital relations is that it is not up to the husband to hold his wife's love but that she should "hold it herself." His theories are put to a practical test when his best friend, a young author, comes to the Big House. The friend falls in love with the wife and frankly tells her husband of the fact, saying that it is best that he go away.

Vowing vengeance on Edward Marriott, whom he believes to have dishonored his mother, The Shadow is a highwayman who robs only Marriott. The Shadow attracts the interest of Dorothy Harden, Marriott's fiancee, and finally he captures her. The action includes the kidnapping, by The Shadow's rival, Ben, of Dorothy; The Shadow's capture and escape; and his rescue of Dorothy. All is happily resolved when Dorothy declares her love for The Shadow and Marriott proves to be innocent of injuring The Shadow's mother.

Bessie Barriscale and Nigel Barrie play Ellen and Gibbs Josselyn, a young married couple who have spent several years in Europe while Gibbs, an artist, developed his talent. When they return to the States, they stay with Gibbs' father (Tom Guise) and stepmother (Kathleen Kirkham). Gibbs had never cared much for his stepmother, Lillian, but now he warms up to her -- a lot. Lillian is much younger than her husband and begins spending a suspicious amount of time with her stepson.

Emphasizing themes of female independence and the esteem due to the men serving in the armed forces, the plot involves a strong-willed young woman (Agnes Vernon) who defies her father in order to marry a soldier (Hobart Henly) instead of the well-to-do suitor preferred by her father. JANE offers glimpses of soldiers on parade at the then-newly built Fort Winfield Scott and other rare views of the Presidio from a century ago

An heiress takes a road trip in a green van. Unbeknownst to her, she has four pursuers.

The earliest surviving film featuring Lon Chaney in a major role, By the Sun's Ray's was but one of several 2-reel westerns starring the florid Murdock MacQuarrie. MacQuarrie plays a detective investigating a series of gold shipment robberies. Along the way, he falls for a mine superintendent's pretty daughter (Agnes Vernon), much to the dismay of a sullen mine office clerk (Chaney), who is also smitten with the girl...