TV's most-watched history series brings to life the compelling stories from our past that inform our understanding of the world today.

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.

Saxophone player Clyde meets a woman named Flowers, and teaches her to dance. He later discovers that gangster boss "Blackjack" is also in love with her. "Blackjack" is also battling gang boss Mike Luego in a violent turf war.

Part of a 7-part series exploring all aspects of Hollywood.

The travails of a third-rate traveling theatre company and its wardrobe lady / maid who dreams of stepping in as their melodramatic production's (Flaming Women) female lead.

Tom Brown shows up at Harvard, confident and a bit arrogant. He becomes a rival of Bob McAndrew, not only in football and rowing crew, but also for the affections of Mary Abbott, a professor's daughter.

A masked criminal who dresses like a giant bat terrorizes the guests at an old house rented by a mystery writer.

A famous opera singer lost her voice when her son was born, and has drowned her sorrows in drink. When a murder is committed near her house, she invents a story in order to get herself back in front of the public again. However, the story she comes up with results in her son being arrested for the murder.

A mother and her son's lives are upended by the arrival of a wealthy flapper to their small New England fishing village.

Jim Joyce runs a garage with old Abner Hope. When Hope's granddaughter, Mary Ellen, comes to visit, Joyce falls in love with her. Joyce has a number of bizarre inventions and he dreams of harnessing the nearby falls for power, but he can't get any financing from the town banker.

Jed is a hillbilly in love with pretty Emmy Lou who is forced into marriage with her dreadful cousin Aaron. Jed interrupts the marriage and Aaron is accidently shot. Jed stands trial for the murder but is acquitted when almost everyone admits to the murder.

Angela comes to Hollywood with only two things: Her dream to become a movie star, and Grandpa. She leaves an Aunt, a brother, Grandma, and her longtime boyfriend back in Centerville. Despite seeing major movie stars around every corner, and knocking on every casting office door in town, at the end of her first day she is still unemployed. To her horror, when she arrives back at their hotel, she finds that Grandpa has been cast in a movie by William DeMille and quickly becomes a star during the ensuing weeks. Her family, worried that Angela and Grandpa are getting into trouble, come to Hollywood to drag them back home. In short order Aunt, Grandma, brother, boyfriend and even the parrot become superstars, but Angela is still unemployed...

Billy Garrison, a jockey, is framed and suspended for throwing a face. Depressed, he goes to a bar and eventually gets into a fight. He loses his memory, and is taken to the home of pretty young Sue Desha, who gets him a job as a jockey for her father, Col. Desha. Unfortunately, the man who framed Billy, named Crimmins, finds out he's working for the Sue's father and reveals Billy's past to the colonel. Complications ensue.

Harry Bullway is a careless young man, always after a good time. He nearly runs over a blind beggar with his car, but he shows no remorse. In response to his heartlessness, the beggar curses him, saying, "May you always have everything that you want."

An orphan boy from the Kentucky hills joins the Union Army and rescues his adopted family from Morgan's raiders. He learns his real identity when he returns after the war.

Johnny Spivins adores Milly Fields, but since he's only an errand boy at the local grocery, he can't get her to look his way. Things get even worse when a city boy comes to town and boards at the Fields' home.

A terrible toothache causes Jack Robin to stop his automobile in front of the home of Dorothy Mason. Noticing a flat tire, Jack attaches his automatic pump and forgets about it as he listens enthralled to Dorothy's singing. When the sound of the burst tire brings Dorothy running out, Jack feigns injury so he can be nursed by her. After he leaves the house, and Dorothy's father discovers some important invention plans missing, Harlan Graves, Dorothy's suitor, suggests that Jack stole them. Jack, suspecting Graves, breaks into Graves' home to clear himself and meets a real burglar, "Spider" Kelly, who adopts Jack as his guide. They blow up a safe at a house party where Jack suspects the plans to be hidden. The papers are found, Graves is arrested and Spider, disappointed that Jack made such a mess in blowing the safe, goes off, leaving Dorothy and Jack happily alone.

Jack Pickford got his own production company when his sister Mary signed a huge contract with First National, and this was its first product. the story takes place in the Blue Ridge mountains, where the Appersons and the Yartons have an ongoing feud.

Young Kendall struggles for acceptance in the eyes of his wealthy father, who sees him only as a layabout.

The adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer.

Davy Glidden is the son of the adjutant general in charge of an old soldier's home in a small town near the Top Copper mine. Davy idolizes Capt. Jerico Norton, an aged veteran of the home who entertains the boy with stories of his exploits in the Civil War. When Mrs. Edward and her daughter Flora come to visit Mrs. Glidden, Davy is smitten by Flora but she ignores him. Davy is bursting with patriotism by the stories told to him by the captain and is eager of doing something noble to attract Flora's attention. He finds the opportunity to accomplish both goals when he overhears two German spies, Carl Bender and Frank Schmale, plotting to create havoc in the mine by calling a strike and then dynamiting the mine. Enlisting the aid of his friend Capt. Norton, Davy provides the means for the old soldiers to serve their country once again.

Silent version of the Twain tale, filmed in Pleasanton, California. A Missouri boy (Jack Pickford) encounters his first love (Clara Horton) and bucks responsibilities to find adventure with his friend, Huck Finn (Robert Gordon).

Jimmie Dexter is on his way to college when his mother discovers that her stocks have stopped paying dividends. Jean Hilton, who has always loved Jimmie, offers to secretly stake him using her own inheritance. So Jimmie goes off to college, none the wiser, and gets tangled up with vampy cabaret singer Diana Parish.

Seventeen year old William Sylvanus Baxter has fallen madly in love with young coquette, Lola Pratt. After spending all of his money on the fickle girl, she runs off with an older man. William now heartbroken, contemplates suicide, until a friend from childhood, May Parcher, pays a visit and William decides to fall in love with her.

Holding a grudge against Robert Torrens and his wife, who live in Italy, a member of the Mafia kidnaps their infant daughter Lois. Fifteen years later, after having been raised by Italian peasants, Lois, now called Peppina, dresses as a boy and stows away on a ship to America in order to avoid a marriage to a particularly loathsome count. While aboard ship she befriends Hugh Carroll, an assistant district attorney, who arranges first-class transportation for the "boy." In New York, she once again meets her kidnapper, who fled to America after the crime. He forces Peppina to maintain the masculine disguise and to pass counterfeit bills for him, for which she is arrested. Peppina gladly exposes the kidnapper's operation to the authorities, one of whom, Hugh, recognizes her as the "boy" he met on the ship. Then, once the kidnapper has been apprehended, Peppina is reunited with her parents, after which she and Hugh, who has finally discovered that she is female, get married.

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

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.

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.

The story of David Harum, a small-town banker, and how what he does and who he is affects the lives of everyone in his town, whether they--or he--realize it.

Former newsboy and jockey Joe Braxton, becomes a millionaire rancher and decides to visit New York. He soon becomes the prey of swindler Tom Linson and socialite Viola Grayson. Linson defrauds Braxton's old employer, Colonel Downs, and attempts to corrupt Eleanor, the colonel's daughter. When Eleanor learns that Linson intends to destroy Joe on the stock exchange, she warns him, disregarding Linson's threat to ruin her reputation. Eleanor is too late, but Joe recovers his losses by riding Mongrel to victory in the Kentucky Futurity, after having stacked his last dollar on the horse's success.

Known as "Wildflower," Letty Roberts meets Arnold Boyd, a wealthy man who is weary of life in the city.

A young girl, Anemone, who lives with her Aunt is abducted by a crude family of Virginia mountain moonshiners. A fight between two of the young male relatives decides who will marry the girl. Lancer is the winner and marries Anemone against her will. She is reunited some time later with her Aunt, but when she learns Lancer is in dire trouble she returns and stays by his side, realizing she had always been in love with him.

John Howard Payne leaves home and begins a career in the theater. Despite encouragement from his mother and his sweetheart, Payne begins to lead a life of dissolute habits, and this soon leads to ruin and misery. In deep despair, he thinks of better days, and writes a song that later provides inspiration to several others in their own times of need.

John Howard Payne leaves home and begins a career in the theater. Despite encouragement from his mother and his sweetheart, Payne begins to lead a life of dissolute habits, and this soon leads to ruin and misery. In deep despair, he thinks of better days, and writes a song that later provides inspiration to several others in their own times of need.

Liberty Belles, silent comedy film from 1914 starring Dorothy Gish, Jack Pickford, and Gertrude Bambrick.

A feud between the families of Gourd and Fork Ranches

Biff Dugan, the eldest son of a poor family living in a tenement on the squalid East Side of New York, leads a gang of hoodlums, among whose members is his brother Porky. Their sister Jess is a consumptive whose health was ruined in a sweatshop. During a melee in a mission run by reformer Henry Davis, the Dugan gang encounters Billy Drew and his sister Cora, newcomers to the city. Porky saves Cora from the unwelcome attentions of Biff's rival, Spike Golden, and the two fall in love. Later, when Spike is killed in a gang war, Biff is wrongfully convicted of the murder and executed in the electric chair. Porky, who served a short term in prison for his part in the crime, comes back to the city to find that Jess has died and Cora has returned to the country.

In the home of ease and refinement a new life opens to the girl. She no longer is obliged to resist the sordid way of poverty and sin. The woman's indulged son, overcome by his weakness and debt, robs his mother. It is then the girl saves the home from disgrace.

His mind perverted by the many lies forced upon him, Lang becomes an outcast from the Labor Union. In order to reinstate himself he conceives a plot to do away with the owner of the iron works, an infernal machine stuffed in a turkey's breast. The story tells how the turkey found its way to a table where there was more love than plenty.

Just before she dies, an elderly married woman stashes the horde of money she's secretly accumulated beneath the false bottom of an old shipping trunk. After her death, her husband, believing himself penniless, has to leave their old home and move in with his son's family, where he's treated with no respect or consideration. Also on the scene is a newly-hired kindly young housekeeper. She and the old gentleman become close friends and eventually run away together (taking the old shipping trunk with them).

In the apartment hotel lived the aspiring maid, whose solicitude maintained order in the bachelor's apartment. He was her ideal, and the all-adoring bell-boy was firmly but gently given to understand that maids who read "Heliotrope Glendening's Advice to Young Ladies" look higher than ice-water toters. A compromising complication, however, with an unexpected visit from a beautiful lady, quite convinces the aspiring one that wealthy young bachelors may be the grandest men ever, but their aspirations, when it comes to the crucial test, are not for chambermaids. Science influences his actions so much that he gets into trouble with the police.

The story of the massacre of an Indian village, and the ensuing retaliation.

To fulfill a dying mother's bequest for her daughter, the town pastor purchases the daughter a stylish hat, and gossip spreads through the town.

An abusive father and husband attends a play one night and sees that the "villain" in the piece does to his family exactly what he is doing to his own family.

The young lover leaving home at the opening of the war to join the Confederate Army, tells his brother to take care of his fatherless sweetheart during the perilous times which are to follow. But the brother weakens and fails to be true to his trust. He permits her to believe that her lover is dead. Caught in the neighborhood, however, between the lines of the enemy, the brother appears before them at the crucial moment. In retaliation the false brother turns informer. Both forces are aroused to arms and during the attack upon the girl defending her wounded lover and family alone in the negro's cabin retribution comes in the form of a stray bullet.

Nine-year-old Nedda is a direct descendant of the Trevors, a family that can trace its roots back to the reign of King Charles I. Alas, the Trevors suffer severe financial reverses, and Nedda is yanked from the luxury of her ancestral home in Britain to be raised on New York's Lower East Side. Ten years later, the grown-up Nedda stands accused of the murder of her mother.

A man recognizes the thief who had previously robbed him as one of the men involved in an unrelated mob shootout.

A lonely young woman lives with her strict father who forbids her to wear make-up. One day at an ice cream social, she meets a young man you seems interested in her. However, unknown to her, he is a burglar who is only interested in breaking into her father's house. One night she is awakened by a noise.

When the Great Chief's body is placed before the funeral pile by his mourning braves, his sacred blanket is covered over it and a sentinel left to watch that this, his last resting place, is not desecrated. The tribe has just departed for their village when a mountain outlaw appears and succeeds in stealing the blanket, having given the sentinel doctored whiskey. When the Indians discover this they exile the unfaithful sentinel until he can recover the blanket.

The two brothers and their adopted daughter of the household grew up from childhood together. The girl and the younger brother were childhood sweethearts. His elder brother was considered the bad man and dead shot of the hills. The younger brother has been living in the valley for a long time and returns home to his family. He is now refined, educated, and, of course, a revelation to the little girl, who, though betrothed to the elder brother, is strongly attracted by him. Hence there is a renewal of childhood affection which the elder brother does not take kindly to.

A love story set among Native Americans.

This ill-tempered gentleman accompanies his wife to the seashore, but being so insanely jealous of her makes the stay there rather unpleasant. First of all, he refuses to go bathing in the surf with her, and she, despite his command not to, goes in alone. Towering with rage at his wile's defiance, he gets himself into several embarrassing positions. In fact he makes a fool of himself generally.

A lonely widower living in the Italian quarter of the city, whose only solace since the death of his wife is his little child, reluctantly becomes a member of a secret society existent among his countrymen. The active members of this society have observed the success of another Italian and feel that their they should share in his wealth. They send him a demand for $5,000, ostensibly to pay for the expenses of their society. The rich man is defiant of their demand, and consequently the society decides to kill him-- electing the newest member, the widower, to do the deed.

A Mack Sennett comedy short starring Mack Sennett, Kate Toncray & Mabel Normand.

Two men are released from prison after having served their sentences. One is determined to go straight and stay out of trouble, but his fellow ex-con has other ideas, and his plans wind up spelling trouble for both of them.

Hank Hopkins is a "rube" of the most extreme type, and on the morning of the great Shrine Parade in Los Angeles, he is met by a couple of friends, practical jokers, who make him believe that they can effect his participating in the grand pageant. He telephones his wife to be on the grandstand to see him march by. Mrs. Hopkins receives a great disappointment, but it is slight to what Hank receives when he attempts to get into line.

An ambitious race driver who is not allowed to compete decides to outwit his competitors.

Nora, the waif, is forced to attend school. She warms to her teacher for the way that he defends her against the taunts of some of the students, but when she's made to wear a dunce cap, she flees the schoolhouse in shame. Unsupervised by her alcoholic father, Nora becomes a determined truant, wandering the town during school hours. There she catches the attention of a huckster, who convinces her that they will run away and be married. The schoolmaster, meanwhile, preoccupied by Nora's absence, leaves his other students to go find her. He encounters her at a crossroads, being spirited away by the huckster, and calls the man's bluff by saying that he'll find them a minister.

Aviation enthusiast Josephine rescues her suitor, Chubby, from an angry mob with the help of Slim and his airplane.

Mabel seems to be working ironing dresses in a dress shop when something catches her attention in a newspaper. Apparently, it is an ad on becoming a detective. Mabel goes rushing off to a Detective school run by Fred Ward.

A Mexican is thrown out of a bar by a young prospector and swears to get even. Later, he kidnaps the prospector's wife. In the meantime, a group of drunkards shoot and kill an old Indian; The son, a brave, vows revenge and asks the tribal chief for help. When the Indians attack both prospector and Mexican, these two make a temporary truce and join forces against the common enemy.

A cabin-boy gets to take center stage during a riotous adventure story involving mutineers and pirates and buried treasure.

A lost film. Hiram Flint, a young gambler and horseman, loves Madge, the daughter of James Spotwood but she repulses him. He buys a mortgage on the farm of Spotwood. The interest on the mortgage is due to be paid but Owen, Spotwood's son gambles and loses the money at roulette. James Spotwood has given to Owen a thoroughbred and they enter it in a race at the county fair in an effort to get back the money lost. Flint also has a horse entered and drugs the Spotwood rider on the eve of the race.

An elderly woman looks back on the special times in her life, thinking especially about her now-departed husband and the things they did together. Though it is sad that these times are now gone, she is comforted by her memories and by the hope of sharing in the lives of her child and grandchildren.

Short drama about the commandment "honour your father and your mother".

After conducting a raid on a Rebel camp, a Czarist officer discovers that his wife has joined the revolutionaries. Out of loyalty to his wife, the officer resigns his commission and escapes with her to America. Several years later, the ex-officer is gainfully employed as a waiter in a Russian restaurant. For the sake of his grown son, who is engaged to marry a wealthy socialite, our hero pretends to be a man of great wealth and prestige. The truth is revealed in the final scene, but "Waiter Number 5" is saved from disgrace by the timely arrival of his former superior officer.

A young girl living in Salem attracts the attentions of The Puritan. After he's brushed off by the girl, he becomes furious and desiring revenge, declares to a council of elders that the girl and her mother are witches.

A rich nobleman steals a perfume merchant's wife just prior to the French Revolution, in which the perfumer is a leader of the peasants. His priest made him swear an oath to leave vengeance to God, however.

Two spinsters on their way to church, are accosted by a couple of burly tramps. When Mabel is called to the church meeting with her mother, she sends Muggsy a note asking him to meet her after the service so he may walk home with her. Muggsy is there on time, however, the old ladies are afraid to make the return trip unaccompanied. The pastor asks that a man escort them home. Poor Muggsy gets chosen, and when the trio reach the deserted part of the road, the tramps again appear.

In the opening of this subject we find the callow youth as he points towards the city's spires, exclaiming to his dear old mother, "Mother, there in the big city is my sphere. There will I turn the world over." Off he goes cityward, ambitious and presumptuous, and perhaps we may add reckless. Alas, the city's whirl is quite a change from the simple quiet life in the country and the youth falls a victim to the snares that beset the unsophisticated.

Ramona, residing on her wealthy Spanish adoptive mother's rancho in California, falls in love with the Indian Alessandro. When Ramona is denied permission to marry Alessandro, the lovers elope, only to find a life of great hardship and unhappiness amidst the greed and injustice of the white landowners.

To Walter Holden since the death of his wife, falls the responsibility of raising his only child.

Agnes, a singer in a country church, is practicing one day when a vaudeville manager hears her and offers her a job. Over the objections of the curate who loves her, she accepts the offer and goes to the city. Later the curate goes to hear Agnes perform and, fearing that her soul is being corrupted by show business, he asks her to return to the small town with him. When she refuses, he is prepared to kill her in order to protect the purity of her soul. This brings about her change of heart, and together they return to the little church.

Tom and Ethel separately decide to go bathing in a river. Pranksters switch their clothes and they each have to dress up as the opposite sex.