King Baggot

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).

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In 1915, Kansas theatre usher Merton Gill is a rabid silent-movie fan. When he brings Mammoth Studios free publicity by imitating star Lawrence Rupert's heroics, they bring him to Hollywood to generate another headline; he thinks he'll get a movie contract. Disillusioned, he haunts the casting offices, where he meets and is consoled by Phyllis Montague, bit player and stunt-woman. When Merton finally gets his "break," though, it's not quite what he envisioned.

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Living with his family in Baltimore, 9-year-old Lewie Penrose claims that he can converse with horses--and also pick the winners of upcoming races. When it appears as though Lewie is telling the truth, he attracts the interest of gambler Rich Roeder who needs a "sure thing" in the upcoming Preakness. Meanwhile, Lewie's older brother John carries on a romance with the lovely Martha.

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Penny Addams lives in a constant state of depression stemming from the trauma of her father's death when she was just a young girl. Her brother, Chase, and stepmother, Lee, work to help Penny process her grief through psychotherapy and revisiting their past, but only the revelation of long-buried family secrets -- including her Lee's secret lover and the true nature of her father's death -- can bring Penny out of her intense despair.

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Christine Evans, the fifteen-year-old daughter of the widowed American ambassador to Mexico Jeffrey Evans, believes that she is no longer a young girl and that she has fully matured into adulthood. Eager to make her mark in the sophisticated world of foreign diplomats living in Mexico, Christine appoints herself as organizer of her father's social activities and takes over the planning of a big garden party he will be hosting. Because he loves his daughter,

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A married woman and a drifter fall in love, then plot to murder her husband.

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When two bumbling barbers act as agents for a talented but unknown singer, they stage a phony murder in order to get him a plum role.

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A young couple's accident could make them rich, if they can evade a Nazi spy ring.

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Comedy about a bandleader with hypnotic powers.

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A flirt tries to make her fiancée jealous by hiring a gigolo.

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An unknowing orphan idolizes the horse thief/mail robber who has shot his father.

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In Chicago, an unemployed actor aims to solve the mystery concerning a string of ax murders, apparently committed by a lunatic.

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Doc and Wishey run into some Nazi-agents, who want to smuggle bombs into the USA from a Mexican border hotel.

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Fast-talking con-man and grifter Candy Johnson rises to be the corrupt boss of Yellow Creek, but his wife's alcoholic father tries to set things right.

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A detective is hired to protect the life of a singer, who has recently inherited a department store, from the store's crooked manager.

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Discovery by Flo Ziegfeld changes a girl's life but not necessarily for the better, as three beautiful women find out when they join the spectacle on Broadway: Susan, the singer who must leave behind her ageing vaudevillian father; vulnerable Sheila, the working girl pursued both by a millionaire and by her loyal boyfriend from Flatbush; and the mysterious European beauty Sandra, whose concert violinist husband cannot endure the thought of their escaping from poverty by promenading her glamor in skimpy costumes.

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Seeking US citizenship, a Viennese refugee arranges a marriage of convenience with a struggling writer.

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When a rich woman's ex-husband and a tabloid-type reporter turn up just before her planned remarriage, she begins to learn the truth about herself.

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When a teenager's father is accused of murder, the boy and his high-school classmates set out to find the real killer.

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A woman runs away with her music teacher in order to escape an arranged marriage, but they struggle to make ends meet.

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Comic mayhem results when a small town pet store owner, mistakenly believed killed during a sea voyage, turns up very much alive.

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On return from Europe Dr. Decker foils glamour girl Georgi from jumping overboard. At Decker's suggestion to keep busy, she assists at his clinic in the slums.

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After discovering his star dancer is expecting and can't perform, film producer H.W. Workman and his publicist concoct a scheme to stage a college dance contest to find a new star.

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An attorney handling a murder case is unaware his own wife played a crucial role in the killing.

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Mary and Larry are are a modestly successful skating team. Shortly after their marriage, Mary gets a picture contract, while Larry is sitting at home, out of work.

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The City Treasurer stands in for the mayor, throwing out the first pitch on Opening Day.

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A boozy former veterinarian and a teenage orphan team together with dreams of entering a broken-down horse in the big race.

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While in Shanghai reporting on the Sino-Japanese war, Chris Hunter, a shrewd news reporter, meets pilot Alma Harding. She does not trust him, but he manages to hire her as his assistant. During an adventurous expedition through the jungles of South America, her opinion of him begins to change.

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Devout but iron-willed Father Flanagan leads a community called Boys Town, a different sort of juvenile detention facility where, instead of being treated as underage criminals, the boys are shepherded into making themselves better people. But hard-nosed petty thief and pool shark Whitey Marsh, the impulsive and violent younger brother of an imprisoned murderer, might be too much for the good father's tough-love system.

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The young Austrian princess Marie Antoinette is arranged to marry Louis XVI, future king of France, in a politically advantageous marriage for the rival countries. The opulent Marie indulges in various whims and flirtations. When Louis XV passes and Louis XVI ascends the French throne, his queen's extravagant lifestyle earns the hatred of the French people, who despise her Austrian heritage.

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A gang of 'professional torches' burn down stores for the insurance money.

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A department store has an indoor ski slide for the annual contest for store employees. Salesgirl June has two admirers - a sausage salesman in the store and the store's snooty ski instructor. The Dandridge Sisters (Dorothy, Vivian and non-sister Etta Jones) perform two numbers.

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That Mothers Might Live is a 1938 American short drama film directed by Fred Zinnemann. The short is a brief account of Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis and his discovery of the need for cleanliness in 19th-century maternity wards, thereby significantly decreasing maternal mortality, and of his struggle to gain acceptance of his idea. Although Semmelweis ultimately failed in his lifetime, later scientific luminaries advanced his work in spirit like microbiologist Louis Pasteur, who provided a scientific theoretical explanation of Semmelweis' observations by helping develop the germ theory of disease and the British surgeon, Dr. Joseph Lister who revolutionized medicine putting Pasteur's research to practical use. In 1939, at the 11th Academy Awards, the film won an Oscar for Best Short Subject (One-Reel).

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A woman and a man vying for a woman's affection: the usual love trio? Not quite so since the belle in question is Lorraine de Grissac, a very wealthy and alluring society woman, while one of the two rivals is none other than Arsène Lupin, the notorious jewel thief everybody thought dead, now living under the assumed name of René Farrand. As for the other suitor he is an American, a former F.B.I. sleuth turned private eye by the name of Steve Emerson. Steve not only suspects Farrand of being Lupin but when someone attempts to steal a precious emerald necklace from Lorraine's uncle, Count de Brissac, he is persuaded Lupin is the culprit. Is Emerson right or wrong? Which of the two men will win over Lorraine's heart?

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A Night at the Movies is a short film starring Robert Benchley. It was Benchley's greatest success since How to Sleep, and won him a contract for more short films that would be produced in New York. In this comedic short, a man and his wife suffer through a night at the movies. The film was nominated for an Academy Award at the 10th Academy Awards, held in 1937, for Best Short Subject (One-Reel).

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Spies on opposite sides fall in love in pre-revolutionary Russia.

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Four guys who look and sound moderately like the Beatles play a plethora of Lennon/McCartney classics, while footage of memorable sixties events flashes by.

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A jockey finally hits the big time, but he lets his success go to his head, threatening his career and his life.

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Santussa, an orphan who becomes separated from her nurse en route to America to live with her grandfather, is cared for by gangsters who hide their stolen jewels in her ragdoll. In New York, Big Mike, finding Santussa a nuisance, dumps her and the doll in a trash can, where a newsboy finds her. After several adventures, Santussa finds her grandfather, the jewels are handed over to customs officials, and the gang of crooks is reformed.

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Marcel Murphy, a telephone operator with society aspirations, overhears Mrs. Benson's conversation describing a party she is planning for her son, Ralph, and wangles an invitation by imitating Mrs. Benson's voice. At the party a maid accuses Marcel of the theft of another guest's jewelry, but she appeals to Mr. Benson, who covers up for her by describing Marcel as the daughter of an old friend and by secretly installing her in a hotel suite.

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