Released 100 Years Ago Today - 20 April 1919 (USA)

The Eternal Magdalene (1919)

Director: Arthur Hopkins

Writer: Robert McLaughlin (play)

Stars: Charles Dalton, Marguerite Marsh, Charles Trowbridge

Genre: Drama

Time: (5 reels) 50min

Country: USA

Release Date: 20 April 1919 (USA)

Production Co: Goldwyn Pictures Corporation

Survival status: (unknown)

Current rights holder: Public domain.

Plot

Leading citizen Elijah Bradshaw calls a town meeting to persuade citizens to pay $30,000 for an evangelist to lead a religious and moral clean-up to drive out the town's prostitutes. Only one person stands against Bradshaw and cites Christ's charity to Mary Magdalene as the example that they should follow. When Bradshaw discovers that his daughter Elizabeth is involved with his secretary Macey, he orders her out. He then dreams of Magdalene who shows him men in bread lines given hymn books instead of food; a church where the poor cannot reach the door latch; Elizabeth driven from a brothel and depositing her child in an asylum; his son Paul killing Macey and then his own wife dying when Paul is arrested. Horrified, Bradshaw awakens and stops Elizabeth from leaving. After Paul and Macey explain that Macey and Elizabeth have been secretly married, Bradshaw cancels the evangelist's visit and begins to implement compassionate reforms.  

Released 100 Years Ago Today - 13 April 1919 (USA)

Pitfalls of a Big City (1919)

Director: Frank Lloyd

Writers: Bennett Cohen (screenplay) (as Bennett R. Cohen), Bennett Cohen (story) (as Bennett R. Cohen)

Stars: Gladys Brockwell, William Scott, William Sheer

Genre: Drama

Time: (6 reels) 1h

Country: USA

Language: English

Release Date: 13 April 1919 (USA)

Filming Locations: San Quentin State Prison, San Quentin, California, USA

Production Co: Fox Film Corporation

Survival status: (unknown)

Current rights holder: Public domain.

Plot

Tenement dweller Molly Moore, trying to forget her crooked past and go straight, runs a cheap restaurant in the underworld district in order to educate her younger sister Marion. Jerry Sullivan and Spike Davis, two friends from Molly's past, are released from prison. Jerry has always

loved Molly and is determined to find work despite Spike's bad influence. When Spike forces himself on Marion during her visit to Molly, Molly sends her back to her educated friends. Marion then becomes engaged to Ted Pemberton, the brother of her boarding school friend Alice. Spike plans to rob the Pemberton home on the night of the engagement party, and threatens to expose Molly's past if she does not help him. Molly refuses, but when she follows him to the Pemberton home to dissuade him, she is arrested by the police while Spike escapes. Jerry locates Spike, and with the aid of Dave Garrity, a plainclothed policeman, Spike is arrested and Molly freed. Jerry and Molly wed and rebuild their lives.

Released 100 Years Ago Today - 30 March 1919 (USA)

Daughter of Mine(1919)

Director: Clarence G. Badger

Writers: Hugo Ballin (screenplay), Hugo Ballin (story)

Stars: Madge Kennedy, John Bowers, Tully Marshall

Genre: Drama

Time: (5 reels) 50min

Country: USA

Filming Locations: Ludlow Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA

Production Co: Goldwyn Pictures Corporation

Survival status: (unknown)

Current rights holder: Public domain.

Plot
Rosie Mendelsohn, the daughter of a kindly Jewish tailor in New York's East Side ghetto, ends her romance with struggling author George Howard because of her father's objections to her marriage to a gentile. After George leaves, Rosie attempts to find him by becoming a private secretary to publisher Joseph Rayberg, whom she persuades to publish a contest in which authors would send in endings to part of a manuscript she claims to have found. Rayberg, intent on seducing Rosie, agrees to publish the manuscript (which is a version of George's novel that she had typed earlier, and actually is a humorously idealized story of her own life) only after Rosie agrees to have sex with him when the contest is over. When George, down-and-out, submits the rest of his story, Rayberg locks Rosie in his office, but she escapes into George's arms and they go to her father who relents and blesses their union.  

Released 100 Years Ago Today - 16 March 1919 (USA)

The Brand (1919)

Also Known As: Brændemærket

Director: Reginald Barker

Writer: Rex Beach (story)

Stars: Kay Laurel, Russell Simpson, Robert McKim

Genre: Adventure

Time: (7 reels) 1h 10min

Country: USA

Language: English

Release Date: 16 March 1919 (USA)

Filming Locations: Truckee, California, USA

Production Co: Rex Beach Pictures Company

Survival status: (unknown)

Current rights holder: Public domain.

Plot

A dancehall girl struggles to make a life for herself in the mining camps of Alaska, despite the obstacle of a villainous gambler.  

Released 100 Years Ago Today - 10 March 1919 (USA)

Experimental Marriage

Also known as [Saturday to Monday]

Director: Robert G. Vignola

Writers: Alice Eyton, William Hurlbut (play)

Stars: Constance Talmadge [Suzanne Ercoll], Harrison Ford [Foxcroft Grey], Walter Hiers [Charlie Hamilton], Vera Sisson [Dot Harrington], Edythe Chapman [Mrs. Ercoll], Raymond W. Hatton (Raymond Hatton) [Arthur Barnard], Maym Kelso [Mrs. Entwhistle], Jim Gordon [Callahan]

Country: USA

Release Date: 10 March 1919 (USA)

Production Co: Select Pictures Corporation production; distributed by Select Pictures Corporation.

Genre: Comedy, Romance

Time: (5 reels) 50min

Survival status: (unknown)

Current rights holder: Public domain.

Plot

Because he does not want to lose feminist Suzanne Ercoll, lawyer Foxcroft Grey unhappily accepts her proposal that they marry but live together only from Saturday until Monday, leaving each free to live as he pleases the rest of the week, no questions asked. On their first Monday morning together, after Suzanne leaves Foxcroft's apartment, Foxcroft helps his upstairs neighbor Charlie Hamilton, who after an all-night party dared Dot Harrington to stay and cook breakfast, to get Dot out of the building without being seen. Suzanne returns shortly after and sees Dot coming out of Foxcroft's bedroom. When Foxcroft says nothing, Suzanne tries to make him jealous by arranging for him to find her in a playwright's bungalow, but Foxcroft sees through her scheme and remains unmoved. After a feminist delegation presents Suzanne with an award, Foxcroft finds her in tears wanting to end the arrangement, and they begin to live conventionally.  

Released 100 Years Ago Today - 19 May 1918

Two-Gun Gussie

A Harold Lloyd one-reeler(8 min). Directed by Alfred J. Goulding

A mild-mannered young man has left home, and is now playing the piano in a bar in the west. The dangerous criminal Dagger-Tooth Dan enters the bar where the young man is playing. Soon afterwards, the local sheriff also arrives, with some letters that he has received. Dan notices the letters, and he switches the information in them to make the sheriff think that the piano player is the dangerous one.

Released 100 Years Ago Today - 12 May 1918

The Non-Stop Kid

A Harold Lloyd one-reeler(12 min). Directed by Gilbert Pratt

The popular young Miss Wiggle has many upper-class suitors, but she prefers Harold to any of them. Her father, though, chases Harold away, because he is arranging for his daughter to marry Professor Noodle. When Harold learns this, he intercepts the Professor on his way to tea at the Wiggles' house, and he then impersonates the Professor.