Lila Lee

Rudolph Valentino stars as Juan Gallardo, a Seville matador who rises from poverty to national fame only to be undone by his infatuation with a wealthy aristocrat, Doña Sol. Fred Niblo directed this Paramount adaptation of Vicente Blasco Ibáñez's novel, with June Mathis writing the scenario that helped cement Valentino's screen persona as the brooding, doomed lover. Lila Lee plays the wife he betrays and Nita Naldi, in her breakout role, the temptress. The film is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Romance · Silent

Flight is a 1929 pre-Code aviation adventure directed by Frank Capra for Columbia Pictures, dedicated to the United States Marine Corps and made with their full cooperation. Jack Holt plays Panama Williams, a hard-boiled Marine gunnery sergeant and pilot stationed in Nicaragua, where he and a hotshot young corporal (Ralph Graves) fly missions against the rebel leader Sandino and rivalry over a nurse (Lila Lee). Columbia built a complete flying field at North Island in San Diego and shot the aerial sequences from real planes without process photography, and Holt's plane actually crashed during filming. Capra wrote the dialogue from a story by Graves, and the film was advertised as the "first all-talking aviation epic." As a 1929 release whose copyright was not renewed, the film is in the public domain.

Adventure · War

A 1928 American silent comedy-drama directed by Burton L. King for Chesterfield Motion Picture Corporation. The daughter of a wealthy industrialist wants to take over the company when her father retires, but the old-fashioned father plans to leave it to her wastrel playboy brother. To prove she can handle the job, she disguises herself as an ordinary working girl and gets a job at her father's factory. The film stars Lila Lee, Cornelius Keefe, and Burr McIntosh. A Poverty Row production made on a $10,000 budget with a ten-day shooting schedule, it is a surviving example of Chesterfield's low-budget output.

Drama · Comedy

A social-problem silent directed by William Desmond Taylor and based on the work of Denver juvenile-court judge Ben Lindsey, who appears as himself. Lewis Sargent plays a boy born to an unmarried mother and raised through brutal orphanages and the streets until Judge Lindsey's court places him with a kindly family, where he is given a chance at a real childhood. The film argues for the then-new juvenile court movement and survives as a testament to Taylor's talent before his infamous 1922 murder. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Silent

Lon Chaney's only talkie and his final film. He plays Professor Echo, a ventriloquist who, with a dwarf named Tweedledee (Harry Earles) and a strongman, leaves the circus and opens a pet shop as a front for a crime spree, using Echo's talent for voices to impersonate wealthy clients' servants and case their homes. The plot turns on Echo's jealous love for his assistant Rosie (Lila Lee) and her affection for the innocent shop worker Hector (Elliott Nugent). Chaney, already ill with throat cancer during production, demonstrates the vocal range that made him famous, voicing Echo, the parrot, and the elderly Mrs. O'Grady. He died a month after the film's release. Published in 1930, the film entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2026.

Crime · Drama · Thriller