Richard Barthelmess

Richard Barthelmess plays "Bilge" Smith, a hard-fisted merchant sailor who puts into a sleepy New England port and falls for Connie Martin (Dorothy Mackaill), the town dressmaker, in this silent adaptation of Hubert Osborne's 1922 Broadway play. Directed by John S. Robertson for Barthelmess's own Inspiration Pictures, it mixes roughhouse comedy — including a memorably chaotic shipboard brawl — with a tender romance about two lonely people from very different worlds. The story proved durable: RKO remade it a decade later as the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musical Follow the Fleet (1936). As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Comedy · Romance · Silent

D.W. Griffith's tragic melodrama, subtitled *The Yellow Man and the Girl*, was his deliberate turn away from spectacle toward intimacy after the scale of *Intolerance*. Lillian Gish gives one of the great performances of the silent era as Lucy, the abused daughter of a brutal London prize-fighter (Donald Crisp), who finds fleeting tenderness with Cheng Huan (Richard Barthelmess), a Chinese shopkeeper whose dreams of peace have curdled in the Limehouse fog. The interracial romance at its center was daring for 1919, though the casting and caricature reflect the era's prejudices. Shot in hazy, oppressive studio interiors, it is among Griffith's most visually beautiful films. Published in 1919, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Romance · Silent

Richard Barthelmess plays "Bilge" Smith, a hard-fisted merchant sailor who puts into a sleepy New England port and falls for Connie Martin (Dorothy Mackaill), the town dressmaker, in this silent adaptation of Hubert Osborne's 1922 Broadway play. Directed by John S. Robertson for Barthelmess's own Inspiration Pictures, it mixes roughhouse comedy — including a memorably chaotic shipboard brawl — with a tender romance about two lonely people from very different worlds. The story proved durable: RKO remade it a decade later as the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musical Follow the Fleet (1936). As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Comedy · Romance · Silent

Howard Hawks' World War I aviation drama follows a Royal Flying Corps squadron on the Western Front, where pilots are sent on near-suicidal dawn patrols and the survivors drink to forget. Richard Barthelmess plays Dick Courtney, an ace who chafes under the cautious command of Major Brand (Neil Hamilton); when Courtney is promoted to command the squadron himself, he learns the burden of sending men to their deaths. Hawks, a former flight instructor, flew in the film himself as a German pilot. The aerial sequences, shot by Ernest Haller, were considered state of the art and were later re-edited into the 1938 remake. The film won the Academy Award for Best Story. Published in 1930, it entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2026.

War · Drama · Action

A college football hero is expelled after a scandal involving a vampish society woman and must redeem himself in the big game. Richard Barthelmess stars, with a young John Wayne among the gridiron extras, in this silent collegiate drama. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama · Sport