An investigation of how Hollywood's fabled stories have deeply influenced how Americans feel about transgender people, and how transgender people have been taught to feel about themselves.

Among the pieces featured in Fragments are the final reel of John Ford's The Village Blacksmith (1922) and a glimpse at Emil Jannings in The Way of All Flesh (1927), the only Oscar®-winning performance in a lost film. Fragments also features clips from such lost films as Cleopatra (1917), starring Theda Bara; The Miracle Man (1919), with Lon Chaney; He Comes Up Smiling (1918), starring Douglas Fairbanks; an early lost sound film, Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929), filmed in early Technicolor, and the only color footage of silent star Clara Bow, Red Hair (1928). The program is rounded out with interviews of film preservationists involved in identifying and restoring these films. Also featured is a new interview with Diana Serra Cary, best known as "Baby Peggy", one of the major American child stars of the silent era, who discusses one of the featured fragments, Darling of New York (1923).

Robert Preston hosts this documentary that shows what people of the 1930s were watching as they were battling the Depression as well as eventually getting ready for another World War.

A compilation of film clips of comedies from 1930's.

An appreciative, uncritical look at silent film comedies and thrillers from early in the century through the 1920s.

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

A compilation featuring comedic stars of the silent era including Will Rogers, Laurel and Hardy, and the Keystone Cops.

A compilation of early-day silent films that serves as a glimpse back to the formative days of the movie industry as a salute to Hollywood's Golden Year, so proclaimed by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce as 1953.

A young girl goes to New York to find a band leader who has stolen all the songs she wrote and is passing them off as his own.

Harry and his pal protect a pretty saloonkeeper from a gang of thugs.

Harry and El, private sleuths, are hired to follow a beautiful showgirl.

Muggs, Glimpy and the rest of the Kids set about to Americanize affable young French refugee Jean Rogers. But after a disastrous baseball game, Jean is chased out of the neighborhood and told not to return.

Absent-minded Harry mistakenly goes home to his neighbor's house. Unfortunately, his neighbor is a beautiful blonde with an insanely jealous husband.

Jimmy O'Brien (Robert Lowery)and Sammy Rubin (Sidney Miller), write jingle commercials for radio, and meet Mary Adams (Dona Drake), who wants to break into radio as a soloist for a band.

El and Harry are two office cleaners turned detectives who are assigned to chase a gangster, but they end up catching the husband and wife they are supposed to protect from him.

Harry finds out he is the missing heir to an estate, and is summoned to an old, spooky mansion to collect his inheritance.

A down-on-his luck actor teams up with a singing barber to do a vaudeville act. Its success eventually leads them to Broadway, but things start to go awry.

Harry, a famous scientist, is mistaken for an escaped lunatic.

Harry's buddy comes over with his fiance. Harry's wife calls on the phone, hears a woman's voice and gets the wrong idea.

Harry is a patriotic citizen who starts a scrap drive but he soon encounters a group of Nazi spies and their hideout.

This short film takes a nostalgic look at the Mack Sennett comedies of the silent cinema era.

Harry is a workaholic piano tuner whose bride-to-be's brother threatens to kill him if he doesn't marry his sister. His latest job assignment involves a socialite and a pesky French maid hounding him constantly.

After getting into a compromising situation with a woman and her angry boyfriend, Harry uses a fire escape to hide in a friend's apartment, but finds that he climbed into the woman's one by mistake.

Harry Langdon lip syncs the title song and interacts with models.

Harry picks up a hitchhiker who turns out to be a runaway heiress. Under threat, Harry agrees to help her hide by pretending to be husband and wife.

Former silent screen comic Harry Langdon earned above-title billing for the final time in his long career in this roughhewn but amusing World War II farce released by Poverty Row company PRC. Langdon and Charles "Buddy" Rogers are newspaper messengers helping reporter Ray Walker obtain an interview with journalist-hating inventor Richard Kipling. But before they know it, Harry and Buddy become unwittingly involved in plans to steal the professor's newest invention: a machine gun.

This Columbia short (production number 3431) has Harry Langdon and Elsie Ames billed above the title, but it is all Elsie Ames with Langdon and Monty Collins (if his name is Monte, how come---except for typos--- he is always billed as Monty?) only around to get a bowling ball bounced off the top of their collective heads, plus a couple of unfunny sight gags. Langdon, while top-billed, also played second-fiddle to the pratfalls of Elsie Ames in "Carry Harry" and even soon found himself billed second to Una Merkel---yes, that Una Merkel--- in Columbia's 1944-short "To Heir Is Human." Lizzy and her friend Aggie are toiling in Kelley's Laundry in order to get enough money to marry their boy friends Harry and Bill, and soon find themselves as a two-woman company bowling team attempting to keep Mr. Kelley from losing a $1000 bet. Things happen. Some of them funny.

The edition of Screen Snapshots celebrates 25 years of production. It looks at the content of edition #1, then a tribute to movie people who have died in those 25 years. Finally there are tributes to the Screen Snapshots series by Cecil De Mille, Walt Disney, Louella Parsons and Rosalind Russell.

Harry Langdon and Charley Rogers star in this 1941 Monogram comedy, about two bumbling brothers who take jobs at a New York food cannery and accidentally lose a valuable diamond inside a can of pork-and-beans.

Fraternity brothers enter one of their own into a scholarship lottery after a women's college insults them. Though the Zeta boys are celebrated for their comedy drag revue, staying undercover as a woman at an all-girls' school wasn't part of the rehearsal!

Marital comedy in which a department store mannequin is mistaken for "the other woman".

Harry wins a turkey at a raffle.

Harry's grandfather's spirit inhabits his old policeman's uniform, which is being used in an amateur play.

A modest country doctor in the antebellum South has to contend with his daughter's upcoming marriage and an affectionate medicine show elephant.

Harry, who can't resist a bargain, buys a St. Bernard dog.

An heiress takes a job as a department store clerk.

Comedy. Although he lacks a law degree Harry persistently pesters District Attorney O.T. Hill for a job

Carla de Hulvea is a rumba dancer who makes news by posing as a South-American heiress. She is doing fine with her hoax until she meets American Peter Jackson, a high-pressure promoter who is looking for movie-producing money. He does some big-time bluffing on his own in order to get Carla to invest in a film he is making with his partner, Roy Harley. Through Carla, Roy meets actress Diana West, who is given a role in the movie, and Roy falls in love with her.

Amnesiac can't find the other half of his winning sweepstakes ticket.

Harry's fiance is the exact double of an escaped axe murderess.

When reporter Dan Miller is once again late to meet his girl friend, Helen Murdock, because he is working on a story, Helen breaks up with him. Later, in an effort to reconcile with her, Dan misses an appointment with the district attorney, and is fired when his editor learns that the district attorney was murdered in Dan's absence. The man suspected of the crime, Mitts Coster, is rumored to be traveling to Europe aboard an ocean liner. While Dan's friend, photographer Snapper McGillicuddy, fetches Helen to the boat, under the pretense that Dan is leaving town to forget her, Dan searches the ship for Mitts, whom he does not recognize. When Helen arrives, Dan feigns illness, and she admits her love for him. When Helen learns of Dan's ruse, however, she angrily hits him with a package that a passenger gave her when she boarded the ship. The package contains a passport for Dorothy Madden, who greatly resembles Helen, and $2,000 dollars.

Harry and his ex-sergeant recall their rivalry over the same girl.

Love Honor and Obey the Law: Harry Langdon and Monte Collins in a 1935 industrial film intended to promote Goodrich Tires.

Harry and his wife move into a "modern", gimmick-laden house.

To get some creative inspiration, mystery writer Harry moves into a haunted house.

New lawyer Harry defends a woman charged with poisoning her husband.

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

A wealthy young man bets his uncle that he can transform a clumsy cleaning lady into a glamorous fashion plate, then marry her off to his bachelor cousin.

The story is set in the village of Oskaloosa, which is in Iowa -- Langdon's home state. A silent movie-style opening title informs us that the town needs a new fire engine, so they decide to stage a play to raise the money. (Nothing more is heard about this, but the finale involves a fire emergency at the theater.) In the opening scene the community players rehearse at the home of the director, a pompous lady named Mrs. Winters. Harry, of course, is The Stage Hand.

Harry is down and out. A woman friend from a temperance union loans him a buck. He goes to a bar and orders a glass of milk to get a free sandwich. After he loses the greenback, the burly saloon keeper confiscates Harry's sandwich and tells him to sweep the floor to pay his tab. In the back room is a boxing ring where the owner stages fights. By happenstance, Harry ends up in the ring. Outside, the temperance union pickets the saloon. Between the beer and the boxing, can Harry stay on his feet and help his crusading friend?

We first meet Harry on the morning of his wedding day. He looks like he's been partying, but we know he's a sweet guy because he sleeps with a photo of his bride. Friends serenade Harry outside, but when he goes to the window to join in they douse him with water. As he prepares for his wedding, he looks in the mirror and it shatters. When the groom attempts to run to the church the ring slips out of his hand and is run over by a passing car. As anyone who has seen Harry's 1924 comedy HIS MARRIAGE WOW can guess, the ring sticks to the tire, and Harry must climb on to the car to retrieve it.....

Harry is a hobo, one step ahead of the law. After accidentally foiling a purse snatcher, he cadges a ride on a flatbed truck, is knocked out when a wax figure falls on him during the ride, and is carried into a museum by someone thinking he's another manikin. Inside, it takes him a while to figure out that he's among dummies. Then, two enterprising jewel thieves arrive to steal the museum director's priceless ruby. Cops are on hand as well: when the ruby goes missing, Harry may be the perfect fall guy. Can Harry stay away from the cops, foil the theft, and behave heroically in front of the museum director's daughter, the same woman whose purse he saved that morning?

Harry Langdon messes up a movie shoot, hitches a ride on an airplane, and ruins everyone's trip. What will the passengers on the unlucky airplane do, when they learn they are stuck flying with "THE HITCHHIKER"?

A New York tramp falls in love with the mayor's amnesiac girlfriend after rescuing her from a suicide attempt.

Tired Feet (1933) is a Harry Langdon comedy short done for Educational Films.

Would-be photographer Harry gets his big chance when a newspaper wants pictures of a prominent gangster and his girl. Harry and another photographer first visit the gangster's girl, and then wait at the scene of an expected robbery. But before they can get the pictures they want, they must first distract a policeman whose presence would otherwise deter the gangster from appearing.

Two men, one timid and one aggressive, make out as comical criminals.

A pair of hapless half-wits get into continuous mischief during the occupation of Germany after WW I.

The king is a juvenile dolt who tries the patience of the shrewish queen. While she's in the throne room awaiting him, he's outside playing with guns, drilling his soldiers, and dallying with the wife of a new minister. The queen catches him kissing her, her husband figures out that something fishy is going on, and the king tries his best to proceed with his plans for a night out. The queen contrives to keep him cuffed in the bedroom: king, queen, minister, and coquette end up in a game of musical beds. Will his royal highness get his night out?

A timid man undergoes a personality change, and turns the tables on the people who've bullied him.

Spanish language version of The Big Kick from Hal Roach.

Revenuers have been chasing a gang of bootleggers for years. They're hot on the trail near a gas station operated by Harry, a seemingly slow witted fellow with a cheery and spunky girlfriend. A shootout between treasury agents and the gang - they transport the hooch in manikins seated in a touring car - takes place in front of Harry's filling station. While Harry's gal stays outside, Harry carries the liquor-filled dummies into the station. Will there be a reward for the heroics of Harry and his honey?

Harry is mistaken for "The Fighting Parson" in a tough western town.

This short was included on the recently released Harry Langdon: Lost and Found collection. This entertainment show features various Hollywood stars and this episode includes Langdon, Lola Lane, Harry Jolson, Lew Cody and Armida. There's really nothing too special here with the exception of it being of minor historic interest.

Harry is made the temporary stationmaster in a small town.

Harry must pose as a woman to help the women he works for get a marriage proposal.

Harry lands on an iceberg with his rival.

Harry is trapped with a blonde in a burning building.

Hal Roach produced this short to introduce Harry Langdon to his comic line-up.

No known surviving copy is known to exist. This well received film revolved around Harry Van Housen's rejection from service in WWI and subsequent heroism in foiling a ring of spies.

A wife, tired of her husband's non-stop carousing, sues him for divorce. The judge, however, comes up with a novel solution--he makes the husband take his wife's place in the household--including dressing like her--for 30 days to see what it's like to be his wife.

Harry will do anything to be a musician, but it takes a junk collector to discover his hidden talents.

Harry, The Odd Fellow, is a tenement worker who lives alone in a shack alongside a warehouse and longs for the companionship of a wife and children like other men. One day he spies a pretty girl in his telescope and sends her by carrier pigeon a note that, alas, is received by the wrong party. The Girl marries and, poverty-striken, leaves her husband during a snowstorm. Harry takes her in, and minutes later her child is born. He works like a slave for the mother and child, pretending they are his own. Meanwhile, the husband finds her and comes to the shack on Christmas Eve as Harry is preparing to play Santa Claus. Not realizing the unhappiness she is causing him, The Girl thanks him profusely and leaves with her husband. Overcome, Harry sits overnight on the doorstep and the next morning is found frozen stiff except for his eyes--with amusing results.

Fire chief Amos McCarthy, a confirmed misogynist, counsels his nephew Harry Howells to avoid matrimony at all costs. Still, the lovestruck Harry is determined to marry his sweetheart Ethel. All that changes, though, when it turns out Ethel is a faithless gold-digger. Disillusioned, Harry spends the night in his uncle's fire house to try and forget his troubles... until the clamor of a fire alarm presents the bumbling Harry with a chance to be a hero.

Harry Shelby has been kept in knee pants for years by his overprotective parents, but the day finally comes when Harry is given his first pair of long pants. Almost immediately, he is expected to marry his childhood sweetheart Priscilla... but instead, Harry's first heady whiff of manhood has got him panting after Bebe, a "fast" woman from the big city. Mistakenly thinking that Bebe fancies him too, Harry risks everything to help her out when she lands in jail, only to end up in hot water himself. Through it all, sweet Priscilla waits for her man to come to his senses.

A meek Belgian soldier (Harry Langdon) fighting in World War I receives penpal letters and a photo from "Mary Brown", an American girl he has never met. He becomes infatuated with her by long distance. After the war, the young Belgian journeys to America as assistant to a theatrical "strong man", Zandow the Great (Arthur Thalasso). While in America, he searches for Mary Brown... and he finds her, just as word comes that Zandow is incapacitated and the little nebbish must go on stage in his place.

Poor Ella Cinders is much abused by her evil step-mother and step-sisters. When she wins a local beauty contest she jumps at the chance to get out of her dead-end life and go to Hollywood, where she is promised a job in the movies. When she arrives in Hollywood, she discovers that the contest was a scam and the job non-existent. But through pluck, luck, and talent, she makes it in the movies anyway, and finds true love.

After the armistice, one U.S. soldier remains unaccounted for: he's wandering the fields of Bomania, hungry, thinking the war is still on.

A poor cobbler's son enters a $25,000 cross-country hiking contest sponsored by the footwear company that has nearly bankrupted his father. He also has fallen in love with the girl on the company's billboards, the competition's daughter, and her sweet inspiration keeps him tramping along.

Harry and his friend have planned to go out for an afternoon of fun. But first, Harry must figure out how to slip away from his domineering wife with some money to spend...

1925 Mack Sennett Comedies production three-reel short.

Harry leaves home to become a doctor, but winds up with "Doc" Healy's Medicine Show.

Horace jumps in a caravan car covered with a large tarp, only to discover that a band of hooded rebels are hidden under the canopy. He fights first with the gang's leader, then all join in. He manages to escape with the leader's kimono. He jumps on a mule as the gang pursues by car. Horace gets a dose of courage when he realizes that a young woman on horseback is watching. He captures the gang with a nifty bit of roping, and she holds her rifle on them. He's performed an heroic deed in front of her. Is it enough?

Little orphan Harry is separated from his childhood sweetheart. Years later, he finds she's a bearded lady in a circus.

Detective Harry is on the trail of a stolen diamond necklace worth $100,000.

In Highland Park, it's Agnes Fisher and Harold Hope's wedding day. Mishaps almost keep them from getting hitched: he goes to the wrong church, then, one of the guests, Professor McGlumm, convinces him that the bride only wants him to collect his life insurance. Finally they marry and her family moves in with them. Harold is now convinced that he'll be poisoned at dinner. When further mishaps give him stomach problems, McGlumm rushes him toward the hospital. On the trip, all is revealed.

Chester Winfield tries to make it as a lumberjack, but he's foiled by his lack of strength and the jealous foreman, Big Bill Reardon, after Chester catches the eye of Hazel Wood, Big Bill's favorite and the camp's waitress. Bill tries to eliminate Chester, so he and Hazel head down the mountain for other work. She waits tables and gets him a job as a dishwasher. He spills kerosene in the soup and then must serve it to an angry customer. Hazel tells a couple of tall tales about Chester, and soon all the customers, the owner, and the cook, think he's a desperado. They make him the saloon bouncer. Some trick shooting seals his reputation. Then Big Bill arrives for a showdown.

A Scottish immigrant on board ship becomes a pawn in a jewel heist aboard the S.S. Cognac, a three-star liner. Blackie Dawson, the uncrowned king of jewel thieves, and his accomplice Pearl Blackstone, have stolen a huge ruby. A detective is searching every cabin, so Blackie forces our young Scot to swallow the gem and, under threat of being shot, to stay mum. The detective is assisted by Flora Danube, a blue-eyed Bulgarian daisy who keeps those eyes open. To escape death, the young Scot disguises himself as a woman, but that draws a lot of attention; when his disguise is discovered, he must climb for his life. Is a European union in the offing?

As Harry has "cleaned up" on the football field and won the big game, Natalie's dad figured that he should do the same in the world of work before marrying his daughter. Harry's chance to prove himself comes with an "engineering" job with the city. But it's sanitary engineering, and while our street sweeping hero tries his best, he just can't avoid making enemies. When he stumbles into the midst of a lively Chinatown tong war, it's Harry's bravery that saves Natalie and wins the day.

Harry runs into his old Marine sergeant and is reminded of the rivalry they had for a girl while they were stationed in France.

Harry Doolittle wakes up on the day he's to marry Betty Bright. He has a terrible hangover. A strange woman appears in his room saying that he married her the night before, and just then, his fiancée and her mother arrive. There's anger all around, leading to Harry's arrest. He's jailed while awaiting trial in front of Betty's father, a judge. She visits him in the clink. He escapes and disguises himself as a cabman. The police are looking for him, as are his fiancée and her mother. Will it get straightened out in time for wedding bells to ring?

Harry and Marcie are on a train headed for a new job. There's comedy in the berths and during Harry's morning shave, then a thief steals the money Harry needed for his new job, so he has to go back to being a beat cop and Marcie works as a seamstress. One evening, she delivers a dress to a party; a Lothario asks the hostess to get Marcie to stay. Outside the same house, Harry the cop is investigating strange noises. Thieves, bombs, a wallet, a swimming pool, and misunderstandings figure in the luck of our foolish but winsome pair.

A man saves his lady love from Black Mike then comes wedded bliss. He hires a cook, who's brusque, domineering, and constantly smoking a cigar. Out of the blue, the couple gets a visit from his old friend, Roland Stone, bluff and portly. Roland befriends our newly-wed's wife, and this friendship deepens after the husband hires a new cook, the lovely Miss Gainsborough, who gives her boss a little too much friendly attention. That night, a prowler skulks, Miss Gainsborough faints, the newly-wed husband comes to her rescue, and she grabs him and holds on. His wife is offended and determines to leave with Roland. Is the marriage over?

The aging father of a farm lad thinks the boy is after dad's fiancée, so he banishes the lad. The young man heads to California where he drives a cab. Through a fare, he meets a lovely lassie. His work takes him to the beach, where he sees dad's fiancée with another man. The lad and his lassie follow the woman and try to prevent her from marrying yet another rich man. Will our farm boy and his sweetie stop injustice from happening again?

Mild-mannered Harry gets roughed up by a slum gang. Later he returns as a cop to see that justice is done.

Flickering Youth is a 1924 silent Comedy.

Shanghaied on his wedding day, Harry struggles to cope with a cruel captain while fending off a sailor who seems attracted to him.

Our hero is the town's photographer and its sheriff. He' in love with a young woman who's also pursued by the older, more devious Dudley Somerset. First our hero must do a few heroic things, saving the lass from danger. He must also not move too quickly on the romantic front. Once she's willing to marry him, he must balance the duties of groom with that of sheriff, while Dudley tries to convince the lass that our hero is untrue to her...

A series of sketches with a shoe clerk, his wife, and his extra-curricular activities. The shoe clerk steps out on his wife with one of his customers. Both his wife and the woman's husband catch them when they go to the beach and later watch a beauty and fashion contest. His wife enters it wearing a mask. Back at work on Monday, all has returned to normal, until the winner of the contest shows up for her prize - a complete wardrobe...