Short documentary about the Great Depression's impact on film, specifically Berkeley musicals.

Period music, film clips and newsreel footage combined into a visual exploration of the American entertainment industry during the Great Depression.

Film clips highlight the funniest scenes and brightest comic stars in MGM's history.

Edna's grandfather is a conductor of a small orchestra that gives concerts in the park every Sunday. Because of lack of audience the city officials want to cancel these concerts. To stop this from happening, Judy and Edna gather a crowd the following Sunday; and to keep its attention, they themselves perform with the orchestra. Edna sings an aria and Judy sings 'Americana'.

Mary stands by Jack after the Depression of 1929 but considers divorce when he again becomes successful by 1935. Bill, who loves Mary, works at keeping them together.

Adam Larey becomes a fugitive from justice when he escapes after being blamed for a crime he did not commit. He wanders into the desert wastelands and joins an outlaw gang who prey on gold prospectors. Years later, he meets his wife and her gold-prospecting father as they have come there seeking their fortune, and not knowing the danger of the treacherous desert wastes, the poisoned-water holes and the outlaw bands of marauders who roam the desert in search of the gold found by others. He comes to their aid and, eventually, manges to clear his name of the false charge against him.

A con man and his partner inherit a dead gangster's precocious daughter.

Hard-working, henpecked Ambrose Ambrose Wolfinger takes off from work to go to a wrestling match with catastrophic consequences.

Owen, a small time bookie, decides to open an insurance business as it involves lesser risk. His first client is Colonel Youngblood who insures his daughter, Marilyn, against marriage.

When Paul Madvig, a successful politician who fights his rivals to seize the city, becomes implicated in a murder, Ed Beaumont, his friend and right-hand man, must decide which side he is on.

G-Man Jeff Crane poses as a crook to infiltrate the notorious Purple Gang, a band of hoodlums which preys upon other hoodlums. Orchestrating the jailbreak of the gang's leader, Crane joins him in a Dillinger-like flight across the country.

20th Century Fox's highly fabricated film biography of circus showman P. T. Barnum stars Wallace Beery (as Barnum), Virginia Bruce (as Jenny Lind), Janet Beecher and Adolphe Menjou. Released in 1934.

After he inherits some money, Harold Bissonette ("pronounced bis-on-ay") decides to give up the grocery business, move to California and run an orange grove. Despite his family's objections and the news that the land he bought is worthless, Bissonette packs up and drives out to California with his nagging wife Amelia and children.

The Great McGonigle and his troupe of third-rate vaudevillians manage to stay one step ahead of the bill collectors and the sheriff.

Big Steve Halloway, gambler and proprietor of New York's Horseshoe Cabaret, is in desperate need of money. He arranges for his fellow bookies, especially Sorrowful Jones, to each pay him $1,000 for his racehorse, Dream Prince, to lose. With all bets being placed at the window, Sorrowful encounters a gambler, having lost $500, wanting to place his bet but unable to come up with $20. Instead, he places his little girl, Marthy Jane, as security, or in bookie's terms a "marker". "Marky", as she comes to be known, winds up under the care of Sorrowful Jones and his lady friend, singer Bangles Carson.

Sam Bisbee is an inventor whose works (e.g., a keyhole finder for drunks) have brought him only poverty. His daughter is in love with the son of the town snob. Events conspire to ruin his bullet-proof tire just as success seems near. Another of his inventions prohibits him from committing suicide, so Sam decides to go on living.

An ex-gangster tries to resist his old cohorts' criminal activities after he accidentally becomes a movie star.

Kitty Lorraine has one purpose in life: turning her daughter Shirley into a star. Kitty controls every aspect of the girl's nascent career -- even blackmailing a stage manager so that Shirley can take a more prestigious gig. But Kitty goes too far when she breaks up her daughter's budding relationship with sweet artist Warren Foster. Heartbroken, Shirley sets off on a series of disastrous but profitable relationships.

Waterfront couple raise their son to be a sea captain. He grows up to be rather snotty and rebels against drunken Beery. Valiant Dressler keeps things moving even as hubby ruins their tugboat business.

During the Great Depression, all Broadway shows are closed down. A group of desperate unemployed showgirls find hope when a wealthy songwriter invests in a musical starring them, against the wishes of his high society brother. Thus start Carol, Trixie and Polly's schemes to bilk his money and keep the show going.

One woman faces many trials on the road to romance after unwittingly marrying a bigamist, then a carnival's barker and then falling for a young engineer.

New York singer and nightclub owner Lady Lou has more men friends than you can imagine. One of them is a vicious criminal who’s escaped and is on the way to see “his” girl, not realising she hasn’t exactly been faithful in his absence. Help is at hand in the form of young Captain Cummings, a local temperance league leader.

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

A young couple's marriage is jeopardized by the husband's descent into alcoholism.

The vaudeville comedians Smith and Dale star in a clever satire on Prohibition and all its illegal shenanigans. Charlie Dale is the greedy owner of a sweatshop pants factory, and Joe Smith is his underpaid cutter. A letter arrives for Smith, informing him that he's about to receive an unexpected inheritance. Dale intercepts the letter, and offers Smith a partnership in the pants factory...

An insight into the gossip among window mannequins as they come to life when no one's watching.

Ed Wynn, a waiter, tries to get hit employers daughter a start on the stage; Ginger Rogers replaces Ethel Merman when Merman is kidnapped.

Based on the Hammett novel, this ultra-rare film—is nominally taken from the author's classic gang-war novel Red Harvest, which proved too brutal and cynical even for pre-Code Hollywood.

The Highbinders

Bill Dana, a New York City playboy, can't resist the flaming flappers and red-hot mamas along the Great White Way, so he decides to head out west to his uncle's ranch in Wind River, Texas. But the gold-diggers and their relatives follow him.

Philanthropical druggist Daniel Abbott, occasionally robs the rich to take care of the poor, goes to court with his young ward, Jimmy Nolan. In the courtroom Daniel meets Mrs. Warren, who, despondent over her inability to care for a newborn baby, has been charged with attempted suicide. Daniel takes mother and daughter under his wing, watching with pride as the girl, Helen, and his ward, Jimmy, grow to a tender adolescence. Sylvester Doane, a tenement owner, falls in love with Helen, and Daniel makes plans to rob him. Jimmy learns with shock of the plans and goes to Doane's apartment to prevent the robbery. Jimmy takes the gems to forestall his father, but he is found with them in his possession and put in jail.

Two hundred fifty thousand have read this startling novel with its revelations on married life-its intimate story of the times and follies of new conventions that hurl their challenge to the old!

This silent drama's story is based on the Broadway play Hail and Farewell by William Hurlbut.

While having dental work done, Jimmy inhales too much gas and begins believing that he is a detective. He sets out to capture a gang of thieves who robbed Jean's uncle's bank.

When he loses both his wife and child, Montgomery Rogers adopts his servants' little girl and raises her as his own. Completely unaware of her origins, Emerie grows up to be a first class snob. Her socially ambitious aunt takes her to Europe to become engaged to Brooks Fitzroy, an impoverished lord (Cyril Chadwick). On the voyage back she encounters a young man, Dick Clarke who is working for his passage.

Upon being released from prison, Lawrence Hilliard takes the name of John Smith and looks for work, and falls in love with Irene Mason, a social secretary, but is reluctant to tell her about his past.

A group of New York society folk on a yachting excursion are forced to put into a New England fishing village for repairs. The engaged couple Reggie and Patricia are taken with the quaint town and its quainter ways, but also with two locals, Betty Alden and her brother John. Patricia begins to fall for John while her fiancé takes a seemingly unworthy liking to Betty. The new infatuations lead to disharmony.

Two young boys get in trouble with the law and wind up in prison. One, who was raised in poverty in the slums, goes to a reformatory and picks up tips on how to become a master criminal.

Theda Bara plays the social-climbing Olga Dolan, who becomes the Duchess of Rutledge by means of deception and sheer ruthlessness. Sadly, Bara, who had more or less single-handedly begun the "vamp" craze with the prototype of the genre, A Fool There Was, went out with little more than a whisper. She left films after the ironically titled The Lure of Ambition, and was lured back only twice, in: The Unchastened Woman (1925), a poverty row concoction which had few takers, and Madame Mystery (1926)

Edward Campbell, known as Checkers, is a racetrack tout. Determined to reform himself, he foreswears gambling, but must take it up once more in order to save someone he loves from disaster.

World War I, October 1918. The more than 500 men of the 77th Infantry Division of the United States Army, who have been recruited in New York City and trained in Yaphank, are sent to France, to help break down the German defenses located in the Argonne forest…

Lucille Cameron, the spirited daughter of a Kentucky colonel, discovers that her father is nearly bankrupt as a result of his dealings with New York horseman and stock promoter Jim De Luce....

Three sisters, all raised as boys, have trouble fitting into male-dominated society. A lost film.

The story of a poor young woman, separated by prejudice from her husband and baby, is interwoven with tales of intolerance from throughout history.

Young Nan was rescued from a shipwreck by a man who becomes her foster father. Years later, when he dies, she moves to a nearby city and unknowingly gets involved with a criminal gang. When the gang attempts and fails to rob wealthy Thomas Carter's home, Nan finally discovers what they are and tells the police all she knows, resulting in the imprisonment of Bad Riley, the gang's leader. Grateful, the Carter family takes Nan into their home, to replace a young daughter who had drowned years before, and the young son, Rev. Robert Carter, begins a romance with her. However, the jailed Riley soon escapes and comes after Nan.

Suffering from aphasia after being conked on the head, a man is coerced into robbing his fiancée's home.

Rich artist David King sends his infant daughter Molly to an orphanage, then years later regrets it and tries to find her. She's sent to slave at a boarding house,and the mistress of the orphanage passes her niece off as Molly.

This 1915 film was completed in August and reviewed by trade papers, but was destroyed by fire in a studio accident. It was immediately remade with a different director and a slightly different cast and release on 2 January 1916, only 6 days after the scheduled release date for the destroyed version.

A swindler scams a newspaper reporter-photographer and then, not realizing where the man is employed, applies for a job at his newspaper.