Cosmopolitan Productions

A small-town girl hungry for a grander life leaves her devoted sweetheart behind for a wealthy businessman's Riverside Drive apartment in Frank Borzage's silent drama. Adapted by Frances Marion from a Fannie Hurst story and produced by Cosmopolitan Productions for Paramount, the film stars Seena Owen as a woman who discovers, too late, the cost of the comfort she traded for love. Borzage's early interest in the emotional lives of working women, the thread he would pull through much of his later career, is already visible here. The film is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Silent

A Lower East Side boy from an immigrant Jewish family grows up to become a celebrated violinist, only to enlist and head to the trenches as war breaks out. Frank Borzage directed this Cosmopolitan Productions release, adapted by Frances Marion from a Fannie Hurst story, with Vera Gordon's Mama Kantor anchoring the family and Gaston Glass as the adult Leon. The film was a hit and a model for the immigrant-family melodramas that followed. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Silent

Marion Davies plays twins separated at birth in this Monta Bell directed comedy-drama: one raised in a wealthy Dutch family, the other in the tenements, who grows up to be a musical-comedy star. The film uses the dual role to contrast old-money respectability with the rough energy of the immigrant streets, and the two worlds collide when the twins fall for the same man. Davies, a gifted comedienne whose talents were often overshadowed by her relationship with William Randolph Hearst, gets to show her range. The film includes early Technicolor and Handschiegl color sequences. Published in 1925, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Romance · Comedy · Silent

One of the first and most influential prison films. Kent Marlowe (Robert Montgomery), a young man convicted of manslaughter after a drunk-driving accident, is sent to an overcrowded prison and shares a cell with two hardened men: the violent career criminal Butch (Wallace Beery) and the more measured Morgan (Chester Morris), who tries to show the new man how to survive. George Hill directed from Frances Marion's screenplay, which was inspired by a spate of 1929 prison riots. The film's attention to the routines and terrors of prison life set the template for the genre, and its mess-hall riot sequence was widely imitated. Marion won the Academy Award for her screenplay and Douglas Shearer won the first Oscar for Sound. Published in 1930, the film entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2026.

Crime · Drama

The headstrong Princess Mary Tudor, sister of King Henry VIII, is betrothed to the aged King of France but falls for the dashing Captain Charles Brandon, and risks throne and life to follow her heart. Marion Davies stars in this lavish Hearst-produced silent costume romance. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Romance · History · Adventure