Tom Powers

Cinema a century ago was a new, exciting and highly democratic form of entertainment. Picture houses nationwide offered a sociable, lively environment in which to relax and escape from the daily grind. With feature films still rare, the programme was an entertaining, ever-changing roster of short items with live musical accompaniment. 100 years on, this special compilation from the BFI National Archive recreates the glorious miscellany of comedies, dramas, travelogues and newsreels which would have constituted a typical night out in 1914. Our selection includes a comic short about a face-pulling competition, a sensational episode of The Perils of Pauline, scenes of Allied troops celebrating Christmas at the Front, and an early sighting of one of cinema’s greatest icons.

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Marc Hill is the attorney for Emmet Devrey, a real estate developer with a past, who is being blackmailed by his former partner Sam Baggett. When Sam's unfaithful wife Marge cooks up a scheme with her used car salesman lover Jeff Calder to bilk both Devrey and her alcoholic husband, Sam is killed and Devrey is accused of the crime. Mark is called to prove his employers innocence.

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Story follows the rise and subsequent fall of the notorious head of a New York crime family, who decides to testify against his pals in order to avoid being killed by his fellow cohorts.

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When his ward seeks protection with rival cattleman John Stewart, embittered, jealous rancher Wick Campbell hires ten outlaws to help him seize power in the territory.

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An American Rancher takes a small herd of Brahma bulls to Brazil where he has sold them for a small fortune. There, he finds himself in the middle of a range war......and in love. His concern, who are really his friends and who are his enemies

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A scientist takes the brain of dead man and revives it via electrodes as it lays suspended in a tank of liquid. Soon, the brain grows to possess enormous psychic powers and inflicts its personality upon the doctor who saved it, creating a "Jekyll and Hyde" paradigm.

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After his best friend and war buddy is mysteriously gunned down, Mike Hammer will stop at nothing to settle the score for the man who sacrificed a limb to save his own life during combat. Along the way, Hammer rides a fine line between gumshoe and a one-man jury, staying two-steps ahead of the law—and trying not to get bumped off in the process.

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An outlaw woman helps one Arizona convict stop another with a Gatling gun.

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Professional killer Bus Crow is hired by cattlemen to eliminate squatters. When Marshal Sam Rochelle is sent to investigate, saloon owner Hallie has to be a reluctant witness.

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A posse's pursuit of bank robbers ends with loot missing and a sheriff (Broderick Crawford) wounded.

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The growing ambition of Julius Caesar is a source of major concern to his close friend Brutus. Cassius persuades him to participate in his plot to assassinate Caesar but both have sorely underestimated Mark Antony.

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A nightclub singer and his partner escape mobsters by fleeing to Cuba with a beautiful heiress, who has inherited a haunted castle on an isolated island. The trio hunt for a hidden treasure and encounter a ghost, a zombie, and a mysterious killer...

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Mike Martin becomes a deputy marshal and takes on a gang of cattle rustlers.

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Joseph Cotten plays an assistant bank manager who steals $1,000,000 from the safe late on a Friday and then plans to flee to Brazil over the weekend.

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Brothers Dan and Neil Hammond return to Texas after the Civil War. Ambitious Dan turns to rustling and then shady land deals to build an empire. Being held for a murder, he is rescued from a lynch mob by Neil, who is now the Marshal, but there is eventually a falling out between the brothers, good triumphing over evil.

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An unsophisticated country girl accidentally joins the army.

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Four Star Playhouse is an American television anthology series that ran from 1952 to 1956, sponsored in its first bi-weekly season by The Singer Company; Bristol-Myers became an alternate sponsor when it became a weekly series in the fall of 1953. The original premise was that Charles Boyer, Ida Lupino, David Niven, and Dick Powell would take turns starring in episodes. However, several other performers took the lead from time to time, including Ronald Colman and Joan Fontaine. Blake Edwards was among the writers and directors who contributed to the series. Edwards created the recurring character of illegal gambling house operator Willie Dante for Dick Powell to play on this series. The character was later revamped and spun off in his own series starring Howard Duff, then-husband of Lupino. The pilot for Meet McGraw, starring Frank Lovejoy, aired here, as did another episode in which Lovejoy recreated his role of Chicago newspaper reporter Randy Stone, from the radio drama Nightbeat.

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It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a syndicated TV adaptation of the beloved DC Comics superhero! You know the drill: When he isn't fighting for truth, justice and the American way, the man in tights dons a suit and glasses for his secret identity as Daily Planet newspaper reporter Clark Kent, who works alongside friends Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen for gruff boss Perry White.

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A Justice of the Peace performed weddings a few days before his license was valid. A few years later five couples learn they have never been legally married.

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Deaf boxer Paul Callan captures the interest of gold-digging blonde Sonya Bartow and retired fight manager 'Pop' Richardson. For a time, Sonya has the upper hand with Paul, but ultimately a rival appears in the shape of upper-crust reporter Ann Hollis. With a 3-way fight under way for influence over Paul, he takes matters into his own hands, but learns that getting what he wanted isn't necessarily a happy ending.

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Story of a girl who witnesses murder of notorious international jewel thief. Afraid that the gang will attack her, she flees to Paris.

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Jim Vesser and his team of railroading men try to build a rail line through a mountain pass, while a group of less scrupulous construction workers sabotages the entire operation in the hopes that they can get their tracks laid first and get the money from the railroad.

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Joe Kovak is a test pilot for military-aircraft designer Sam Bentley, who thinks of Joe as a son. A competing plane company is seeking the same Army contract as Bentley, and offers a $500 bonus to their publicity woman Marge Stevens if she can entice Joe into quitting Bentley to join their company. When Joe takes repeated unnecessary risks in the air, Bentley fires him and Joe goes to work for the competitor. He almost loses his life when the inferior plane he is testing fails to function at a high altitude, a fault that the designer had anticipated but had let get by because of his greed in getting the contract.

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A Cuban businessman's daughter elopes with a professor instead of marrying a banker's son.

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Four strangers board a plane and become fast friends, but a catastrophic crash leaves only one survivor. He then sets off on a journey to discover who these people were, but ultimately discovers the devastating truth about himself.

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In a racially mixed American town, a five-year-old black girl falls unnoticed into a hidden, forgotten well on her way to school. Having nothing better to go on, the police follow up a report that the child was seen with a white stranger, and rumors run wild. Before hapless, innocent Claude Packard is even found, popular hysteria has him tried and convicted. But is he guilty?

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Drummer Stanley Maxton moves to Los Angeles with dreams of opening his own jazz club, but falls in with a gangster and a nightclub dancer and ends up accused of her murder.

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A detective tries to prevent the assassination of President-elect Abraham Lincoln during a train ride headed for Washington in 1861.

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Story of how the Coast Guard trained to help win World War II.

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Citizens of Fairview are outraged when they learn children from the "Patch", a squalid migrant camp on the outskirts of town, will soon be attending Fairview's school.

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Prizewinning boxer Johnny Monterez is mad at the world, feeling persecuted because of his Mexican heritage. Worse yet, his right hand is damaged from years of fighting. Then Johnny falls in love with Pat O'Malley, his manager's pretty daughter, even though his best friend, Rick Gavery, is already besotted with her. Everything is on the line when Johnny, against Rick's wishes, agrees to a match with a fearsome opponent.

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A team composed of an aerospace scientist, an ex-Air Force general, and an industrialist conceives an ambitious plan to land Americans on the moon. From their base in the Mojave Desert, they construct and successfully launch a spacecraft named "Luna" that contains a cargo of four astronauts. But a critical miscalculation of needed power to escape the moon's gravitational pull may put the astronauts' lives in danger.

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A mysterious stranger crosses paths with an outlaw bank robber and a greedy rancher.

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A vain businessman puts strains on his happy marriage to a rich, beautiful socialite by allowing himself to be seduced by a former girlfriend.

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A young man who steals valuable Oriental objects for a crooked antique dealer is hunted down by the police after his latest Chinatown robbery turns violent.

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