Vera Lewis

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

Shoes is a social-problem drama directed by Lois Weber, one of the most important women directors of the silent era. Mary MacLaren stars as Eva Meyer, a young shopgirl who works in a five-and-dime store to support her destitute family. When her worn-out shoes finally fall apart and she cannot afford new ones, she faces an agonizing moral dilemma. Weber's film is a powerful indictment of poverty and the exploitation of working women, made with a realism and sensitivity that was unusual for its time. The film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2014. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Silent