George J. Lewis

Directed by Edward Sloman and produced by Carl Laemmle at Universal, this silent drama tells the story of a poor Russian-Jewish pushcart peddler on New York's Lower East Side and his two sons. The elder son, Morris, ashamed of his immigrant roots, wants to become a lawyer and assimilate into American society. The younger son, Sammy, secretly becomes a prizefighter under the name "Battling Rooney" to help support the family. When the father falls ill and Morris denies his own parent at an engagement party, Sammy denounces his brother and drags him home. The film was praised for its sympathetic and detailed portrayal of Jewish immigrant life, and was a major commercial success, reportedly grossing $3 million. As a work published before 1930, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Silent

The White Gorilla is a 1945 jungle adventure written and directed by Harry L. Fraser and produced by Louis Weiss. Ray Corrigan plays Steve Collins, a white explorer in the African jungle who recounts the story of a lost silent expedition and its encounter with a legendary white gorilla. The film was made by re-editing Fraser's own 1927 silent serial Perils of the Jungle, starring the silent-screen Tarzan Frank Merrill, and adding new sound footage as a framing device. The result is a curious hybrid in which roughly half the running time is vintage silent footage projected at sound speed, with Corrigan narrating the action in flashback. The film is in the public domain.

Adventure · Jungle

The Fighting Marines is a 1935 Mascot Pictures serial in twelve chapters, directed by B. Reeves Eason and Joseph Kane and produced by Nat Levine. Grant Withers and Adrian Morris play a pair of United States Marines who are building a landing strip on Halfway Island in the Pacific when they unwittingly endanger the secret hideout of a masked villain called "The Tiger Shark." The Tiger Shark sabotages their efforts and abducts the brother of the woman (Ann Rutherford) both Marines love, drawing them into a wild jungle adventure of cliffhanger endings and serial derring-do. It was one of the last serials released by Mascot before the company was absorbed into Republic Pictures.

Adventure · Action · Serial

Zorro's Black Whip is a 1944 Republic Pictures serial in twelve chapters, directed by Spencer Gordon Bennet and Wallace Grissell. Despite the title, the hero is not Zorro but a masked woman called the Black Whip, played by Linda Stirling. She is Barbara Meredith, a newspaper proprietress in the Idaho Territory who takes up the mask of her murdered brother to fight a villain trying to block statehood and seize control of the region. Republic could not license the Zorro character itself but used the name to capitalize on the 1940 Fox remake of The Mark of Zorro. The serial is in the public domain.

Western · Action · Serial