Charles Meredith

Kirk Douglas plays a timber baron who arrives in California's redwood country in 1900 planning to strip it bare, only to run up against a Quaker community whose land sits on the biggest trees. The land scheme he builds with the help of a saloon singer and a treacherous foreman slowly collapses as he falls for the widow who leads the settlers and starts to see what the forest is worth. Directed by Felix E. Feist for Warner Bros and shot in Technicolor among the real redwoods, it is a conservation western a generation before that was a genre. It entered the public domain after its copyright was never renewed.

Western · Drama

A young man waits on death row for a murder he insists he did not commit, while a priest, reporters, and prison officials gather for the execution at dawn. As the hours pass, a reporter pieces together evidence that could exonerate the condemned man — if it arrives in time. A low-budget film noir directed by Paul Sloane, told largely through flashbacks inside the prison. The film is in the public domain through non-renewal of copyright.

Crime · Drama