Lloyd Hughes

Colleen Moore stars as a small-town drudge who wins a newspaper beauty contest with a prize trip to Hollywood — only to discover the contest was a fraud. She stays anyway and bluffs her way onto a movie set, where chaos on the soundstage turns her into an accidental star. Directed by Alfred E. Green and based on the popular comic strip by Bill Conselman and Charles Plumb, itself a riff on Cinderella, the film was one of the biggest hits of 1926 and the peak of Moore's run as America's top box-office comedienne. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Romance · Silent

A 1926 American silent romantic comedy directed by Alfred E. Green, starring Colleen Moore. Irene O'Dare (Moore), a feisty Irish girl in Philadelphia, clashes with her family and walks out, heading to New York City to seek fame and fortune. She gets a job as a dressmaker's model and becomes involved with Donald Marshall (Lloyd Hughes), the scion of a wealthy family. Donald's mother doesn't approve of Irene and sets out to discredit her. On the night of a big society fashion show, Irene becomes a sensation — but her mother arrives and takes her home. Based on the 1919 stage musical Irene by James H. Montgomery, with music by Harry Tierney. The film features a Technicolor two-strip color sequence for the fashion show, one of the earliest color fashion sequences on film.

Comedy · Romance

An expedition led by the bombastic Professor Challenger ventures to a remote South American plateau where dinosaurs still roam. The film adapts Arthur Conan Doyle's novel and is most remembered today for Willis O'Brien's stop-motion animation, a direct ancestor of his work on King Kong (1933). The brontosaurus rampaging through London at the climax is the sequence everyone cites. Wallace Beery glowers his way through the lead, and the supporting cast includes Bessie Love and Lewis Stone. The effects were astonishing for 1925 and remain a key milestone in the history of visual effects. Published in 1925, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Adventure · Fantasy · Sci-Fi · Silent

A 1929 American part-talkie science fiction film directed by Lucien Hubbard, based on Jules Verne's 1874 novel. Photographed largely in two-color Technicolor, the film follows Count Andre Dakkar (Lionel Barrymore), a benevolent scientist who has built a submarine on his volcanic island near the kingdom of Hetvia. When the despotic Baron Falon overruns the island, Dakkar's daughter Sonia and her fiancé Nicolai Roget pilot the submarine on its maiden voyage. Pursued by Falon in a second submarine, both craft dive to the ocean floor and discover a strange land populated by dragons, giant squid, and an undiscovered humanoid race. The film was a lavish MGM production budgeted at over $1 million, with additional direction by Maurice Tourneur and Benjamin Christensen.

Sci-Fi · Adventure · Fantasy

Frank Lloyd's lavish silent adaptation of Rafael Sabatini's pirate novel, one of the most expensive films of its day. Four full-scale sixteenth-century ships were built for the production, and the action ranges from Cornish manors to slave galleys to the deck of a Moorish pirate fleet. Milton Sills plays an English nobleman betrayed by his half-brother, sold into slavery, and reborn as the pirate captain known as the Sea Hawk, who returns to harry the Spanish and avenge himself. The film was a huge hit and set the visual template for Hollywood swashbucklers that the later Errol Flynn version would build on. The film entered the public domain in the United States in 2020.

Adventure · Romance · Silent