William S. Hart

A meditation on the human quest to transcend physicality, constructed from decaying archival footage and set to an original symphonic score.

Open details →

A collection of film clips profiling animal actors.

Open details →

A rollicking compendium of the greatest hits of silent-cinema chase sequences

Open details →

A documentary of Hollywood's first great Latin Lover, the contradictions in his personal life, and his premature death.

Open details →

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.

Open details →

Jack Parr hosts a variety program of comedic sketches.

Open details →

Hedda Hopper guides us through some of Hollywood's sights; the home of William S. Hart and a Kay Kyser recording-session being among them.

Open details →

A parade highlights the Screen Actors Guild's Film Stars Frolic, hosted by Walter Winchell as Master of Ceremonies.

Open details →

Stars of Yesterday documentary film.

Open details →

The House That Shadows Built (1931) is a short feature, roughly 48 minutes long, from Paramount Pictures made to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the studio's founding in 1912. It was a promotional film for exhibitors and never had a regular theatrical release and includes a brief history of Paramount, interviews with various actors, and clips from upcoming projects (some of which never came to fruition). The title comes from a biography of Paramount founder Adolph Zukor, The House That Shadows Built (1928), by William Henry Irwin.

Open details →

Hollywood hopeful Peggy Pepper arrives at a major studio, from Georgia, to become a great dramatic star. Things don't go entirely according to plan.

Open details →

William S. Hart stars in this 1925 silent film as a cowboy intent on claiming land during the 1889 land rush in the Oklahoma Territory. Though hardened from years of taming the new frontier, he falls in love with a beautiful woman. Before he settles down, however, he must contend with men who wish to bring him harm. In the prologue of the 1939 Astor Pictures revival of this film, Hart gives a moving eight-minute introduction-- the first and only time he appeared in a film accompanied by his striking voice.

Open details →

A comedy short directed by character Slim Summerville.

Open details →

Jim McKee and his friend Buck rob a stagecoach to get money to support Buck's daughter. Buck is killed, but Jim and the daughter escape. Fifteen years later, Jim finds that he must turn robber again to continue to provide for Buck's daughter.

Open details →

The former gambler turned upholder of law and order after a run-in with a gang of stage robbers.

Open details →

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...

Open details →

A Western involving William S Hart as an outlaw who comes to the aid of a preacher in a small town through his infatuation with the preacher's wife. Rarely screened but considered one of his best; the version at the Library of Congress is missing one of the middle reels.

Open details →

Ben Trego dies defending his twin sons from Indian attack. Separated, the two boys grow up very differently, one as Paul Marsden, the other as a cowboy named Three Word Brand. Paul becomes governor of Utah while Brand partners with George Barton in a ranch. The owner of the adjacent ranch plots to get Barton and Brand out of the way in order to control water rights. When Governor Marsden comes to the area to investigate, Brand sees the resemblance between them, though neither knows about his twin. Brand waylays Paul and takes his place as governor in an attempt to thwart the crooked rancher in the water rights scheme.

Open details →

Robert must avenge his son who was killed in a workplace accident.

Open details →

Sergeant O'Malley of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police gets himself into a gang of outlaws in order to detect and capture a wanted murderer. He finds the killer, but falls in love with the man's sister. In the meantime, one of the outlaws uncovers O'Malley's true identity.

Open details →

Gambler Oak Miller seeks revenge on the man who misused his sister Rose, who is ill and under the care of the woman Oak loves, Barbara. The man Oak seeks, Granger, is planning to rob a wagon train with the collusion of the Indians under Chief Long Knife. When Barbara is suspected of killing her lascivious stepfather, Oak takes the blame and is arrested just before he is needed to save the threatened wagon train.

Open details →

The tough outlaw 'Sierra' Bill falls in love with the traveling girl violinist Nelly Gray. Sierra forces her into marrying him. They have a child, but family life is interrupted by the gambler Ringe, who not only persuades Nelly to leave her husband but ruins Sierra at the gaming table. With thoughts of vengeance, the angry Sierra breaks out of jail and goes after Ringe.

Open details →

Former crook 'Square' Kelly serves in the First World War. When he returns from the war, one of his comrades-in-arms convinces him to join the police force. But Kelly finds himself confronting the very criminals who made up his old gang.

Open details →

Railroad station agent Dan Kurrie is fired from his job by his rival in love, Joseph Garber. Believed false by the girl he loves, Margaret , Kurrie must prove himself by unmasking a gang of bandits preying on the trains.

Open details →

Outlaw Black Deering leads a band of desperadoes, but decides to give up the bandit life. Agreeing to go on one last job with his gang, he is captured when his henchman Jordan betrays the gang for the reward. Deering escapes and determines to avenge himself on Jordan.

Open details →

John Haynes is known as "Hardwood" in the Northwoods town where he is the boss lumberjack. But his uncle bequeaths him a store in Louisiana, which he discovers to his dismay is the modiste shop. When Judge Meredith needs a graduation dress for his granddaughter Caroline, but can't afford it, John comes to the rescue by offering to board at the judge's residence.

Open details →

Buckskin Hamilton guides a wagon train across the wasteland, caring well for the pioneers he escorts, but hoping to solve the murder of his brother by one of the travellers.

Open details →

Square Deal Sanderson is in pursuit of a horse thief, but someone else shoots the varmint before Sanderson can offer him a "square deal."

Open details →

Cowhand Lem Beason wins a shooting contest at a Western rodeo, and as a result is hired by railroad president Gregory Collins to return to Chicago with Collins to take charge of security for Collins' vaults. Lem is reluctant to go, but Collins' pretty niece Rose changes his mind. In Chicago, Lem finds a great deal of criminal activity, but none of it can get the best of him.

Open details →

A silent romantic love triangle crime melodrama about a man who gets out of prison after ten years and discovers that his wife has divorced him and married the man who sent him to prison. Worse yet, she fears he will want to exact revenge, so she sets up her new husband to frame her first husband, so he will be sent back to prison!

Open details →

Boss rider "Careless" Carmody is made sheriff of an Arizona frontier town by Chicago swindler Prentice. The naive Carmody actually believes Prentice to be on the up and up and vouches for him in a land deal with Ruth Fellowes. Taken to the cleaners, so to speak, Ruth blames Carmody, who, in love with the girl, follows Prentice back to Chicago.

Open details →

Drunk and disorderly cowpoke Robert Sands is banished from an Arizona frontier town and hops on a freight train heading for New York. Arriving in Manhattan, the rough-and-tumble cowboy obtains a position as "physical guardian" to a spoiled member of the social register.

Open details →

Cowhand Steve Ransom discovers that German spies are operating along Mexican border, relaying their radio messages into Mexico and thus on to Germany. The spies learn that Steve is a fugitive from American justice.

Open details →

When Gawne finds his brother dying and hears that the killer has run off with his brother's wife, he swears revenge.

Open details →

In this 1918 film, newly restored by MoMA, Hart is a ship's captain in the Pacific Northwest who abandons his post to pursue a woman who does not love him (MacDonald) across the Klondike, eventually rescuing her from the grip of a white slaver.

Open details →

The story is set in Arizona, where the aptly nicknamed Yates is the proprietor of the local saloon. Unable to find any other work, pretty Mary Adams is forced to scrub floors in Yates' establishment. At first treating her with the same disdain that he extends to the rest of the townsfolk, Yates slowly but surely falls in love with Mary.

Open details →

O'Malley pretends to be an outlaw in order to join a gang terrorizing towns along the American border.

Open details →

Jim McKee and his friend Buck rob a stagecoach to get money to support Buck's daughter. Buck is killed, but Jim and the daughter escape. Fifteen years later, Jim finds that he must turn robber again to continue to provide for Buck's daughter.

Open details →

The former gambler turned upholder of law and order after a run-in with a gang of stage robbers.

Open details →

A Western involving William S Hart as an outlaw who comes to the aid of a preacher in a small town through his infatuation with the preacher's wife. Rarely screened but considered one of his best; the version at the Library of Congress is missing one of the middle reels.

Open details →

Ben Trego dies defending his twin sons from Indian attack. Separated, the two boys grow up very differently, one as Paul Marsden, the other as a cowboy named Three Word Brand. Paul becomes governor of Utah while Brand partners with George Barton in a ranch. The owner of the adjacent ranch plots to get Barton and Brand out of the way in order to control water rights. When Governor Marsden comes to the area to investigate, Brand sees the resemblance between them, though neither knows about his twin. Brand waylays Paul and takes his place as governor in an attempt to thwart the crooked rancher in the water rights scheme.

Open details →

Sergeant O'Malley of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police gets himself into a gang of outlaws in order to detect and capture a wanted murderer. He finds the killer, but falls in love with the man's sister. In the meantime, one of the outlaws uncovers O'Malley's true identity.

Open details →

Gambler Oak Miller seeks revenge on the man who misused his sister Rose, who is ill and under the care of the woman Oak loves, Barbara. The man Oak seeks, Granger, is planning to rob a wagon train with the collusion of the Indians under Chief Long Knife. When Barbara is suspected of killing her lascivious stepfather, Oak takes the blame and is arrested just before he is needed to save the threatened wagon train.

Open details →

The tough outlaw 'Sierra' Bill falls in love with the traveling girl violinist Nelly Gray. Sierra forces her into marrying him. They have a child, but family life is interrupted by the gambler Ringe, who not only persuades Nelly to leave her husband but ruins Sierra at the gaming table. With thoughts of vengeance, the angry Sierra breaks out of jail and goes after Ringe.

Open details →

Railroad station agent Dan Kurrie is fired from his job by his rival in love, Joseph Garber. Believed false by the girl he loves, Margaret , Kurrie must prove himself by unmasking a gang of bandits preying on the trains.

Open details →

Outlaw Black Deering leads a band of desperadoes, but decides to give up the bandit life. Agreeing to go on one last job with his gang, he is captured when his henchman Jordan betrays the gang for the reward. Deering escapes and determines to avenge himself on Jordan.

Open details →

Buckskin Hamilton guides a wagon train across the wasteland, caring well for the pioneers he escorts, but hoping to solve the murder of his brother by one of the travellers.

Open details →

Cowhand Lem Beason wins a shooting contest at a Western rodeo, and as a result is hired by railroad president Gregory Collins to return to Chicago with Collins to take charge of security for Collins' vaults. Lem is reluctant to go, but Collins' pretty niece Rose changes his mind. In Chicago, Lem finds a great deal of criminal activity, but none of it can get the best of him.

Open details →

A silent romantic love triangle crime melodrama about a man who gets out of prison after ten years and discovers that his wife has divorced him and married the man who sent him to prison. Worse yet, she fears he will want to exact revenge, so she sets up her new husband to frame her first husband, so he will be sent back to prison!

Open details →

Drunk and disorderly cowpoke Robert Sands is banished from an Arizona frontier town and hops on a freight train heading for New York. Arriving in Manhattan, the rough-and-tumble cowboy obtains a position as "physical guardian" to a spoiled member of the social register.

Open details →

In this 1918 film, newly restored by MoMA, Hart is a ship's captain in the Pacific Northwest who abandons his post to pursue a woman who does not love him (MacDonald) across the Klondike, eventually rescuing her from the grip of a white slaver.

Open details →

Ice Harding, outlaw, tames a wild horse and names it King. Ice and his gang hold up a stagecoach and encounter San Francisco vice king Bates and his innocent niece Betty Werdin. Ice is taken with the young woman, but at first she sees nothing in him. But she begins to come around when her uncle tries to swindle Ice, and the outlaw himself undergoes a change of course under the influence of the girl.

Open details →

Pinto Ben is a pink-nosed cow-pony. A hundred head of cattle are rounded up for beef to be shipped alive to Chicago. Ben and his master, with Segundo Jim, are put in charge. In the Chicago stockyards, men who don't know range-bred cattle from a herd of mountain goats, calmly inform Jim and Ben's master that the steers are to be driven into the big pen. At the same instant two or three stock hands run behind the herd and begin shouting and waving their arms to start the cattle. The beasts, a thousand strong, with horns and hoofs beating the air, bellowing their rage, glaring with bloodshot eyes, thunder into the chute. The two men in front prepare for their death ride. Suddenly Pinto Ben flattens himself before a high, iron-bound gate, and leaps. The pony cleans the gate. The great wave of scorching breath falls back on the other side. Ben's master finds himself sitting on the ground, the head of his dying horse in his lap.

Open details →