Robert Cummings Movies
- 1918
The Charleston and the Roaring Twenties weren't even part of 1918 sensibilities and already somebody was producing an expose on the evils of dance. Whether this drama proved its point is questionable. When a businessman (Robert Cummings) discovers that his pretty young stenographer (Lillian Cook) has a fondness for dancing, he starts taking her out to cabarets. Of course, he has ulterior motives, and the girl finally has to leap out a window to evade his grasp. When she arrives home, she finds her invalid mother dead. Later, the businessman has a heart attacks and he too dies. His son (Harry Spingler) gets out of college and almost immediately gets involved with a vamp (Vera Michelene). Because of her increasing financial demands, the boy steals money from the bank where he works and is sent to prison. The vamp returns to the wealthy man she had temporarily discarded, and when the boy finishes his time, he returns to his old mother and marries the girl who had worked for his father. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
- 1917
This wasn't the first time the Fyodor Dostoevsky novel was made into a motion picture -- it was filmed before in 1913. The story of Rodin Raskoinikoff (Derwent Hall Caine), who is forced to flee his native Russia because of his radical ideas, is told in just five reels -- only a bit more than an hour long. In this brief period of time, Rodin comes to America, kills the miser Andreas Valeskoff (Sidney Bracey) so that he can spread his wealth amongst the poor, escapes punishment when Porphyius (Robert Cummings) is accused of the crime and finds redemption and a true conscience through the love of streetwalker Sonia Marmeladoff (Marguerite Courtot). One gets the idea that Dostoevsky was not meant to be picturized in such a fashion, especially in a couple of scenes which all-too-obviously use fake backdrops. One item of note -- the film's star, Derwent Hall Caine, was the son of Hall Caine, an author whose work was quite popular with women readers around the turn of the century. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
- 1916
Metro's eight-reel adaptation of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet was released during same October week in 1916 that Fox's version of the same play hit the screen. While Fox's version boasted the star power of Theda Bara, the Metro version had the advantage of two "big names" in the cast: Francis X. Bushman as Romeo, and Beverly Bayne as Juliet. Kept secret from the public was the fact that Bushman and Bayne were married in real life; the studio did not want to destroy Bushman's image as an "attainable" romantic star. The pantomimic performances of the two stars were so persuasive and convincing that the dialogue subtitles, drawn from the original Shakespearean text, were regarded as intrusions! Still, some few critics preferred the Fox version of Romeo and Juliet, if only because J. Gordon Edwards was more talented than Metro's John W. Noble. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Francis X. Bushman, Beverly Bayne, (more)
- 1916
When banker Kendall fails in business, his college-educated son (Francis X. Bushman) is forced to join the Army. He works his way up to quartermaster-sergeant and falls in love with Edith Ferris (Beverly Bayne, Bushman's inamorata in real life). Since she is the ward of the post commander (Robert Cummings), he's setting his sights a bit high. On top of that, he has an enemy in Lieutenant Burkett (John Davidson). But the young Kendall proves himself worthy when his regiment is sent to quell an uprising in Nicaragua. He becomes a hero, while Burkett turns out to be a coward. This film was adapted from the novel by Ralph D. Paine which had first appeared as a four-part serial in 1914 in The Popular Magazine. The director, John W. Noble, was a former army officer, and he helped give the battle scenes an air of reality. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
- 1916
Dependable leading man Robert Warwick (who went on to become an even more dependable featured player) stars in Fruits of Desire. Warwick is cast as a hayseed who rises to the top of the executive heap at a local steel mill. In his rise to success, he forgets his humble upbringings, and manages to sever relations with all his old friends. He even trods upon the affections of his faithful girl friend. Warwick's ultimate fall from grace brings things full circle in this cinemadaptation of Henry Russell Miller's novel The Ambition of Mark Truitt. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1916
Hard to think of Lionel Barrymore as a romantic lead, much less a young coward who makes good. Yet Barrymore plays both in the 1916 silent production Brand of Cowardice. Barrymore plays Cyril Hamilton, a chicken-hearted easterner who heads west. He makes up for his past misdeeds by rescuing a Cavalry colonel's daughter Grace Valentine from Mexican bandidos. Note: the "Robert Cummings" and "John Davidson" listed in the cast are not the talkie-era stars of the same name. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1915
Director James Young guided his wife Clara Kimball Young through the five reels of The Heart of the Blue Ridge. Young plays a girl of the mountains who becomes the romantic bone of contention between two hillbillies. She favors her neighbor Chester Barnett, but moonshiner Robert Cummings (no, not that Robert Cummings) won't take "nope" for an answer. Cummings abducts Young, intending to have his way with her, but Barnett intervenes. The climactic set-to is excitingly staged high atop a treacherous mountain. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1915
Johnny Hines was a popular light comedian of the teens and twenties. One of Hines' earliest star vehicles was The Cub, directed by no less than Maurice Tourneur. Our hero plays a cub reporter (no lie!), sent to Mountain Country to cover a hillbilly feud (the Hatfield-McCoy contretemps was still blazing in 1915). In his own inimitable fashion, Hines straightens out the conflict, winning the heroine in the process. The Robert Cummings who plays "Cap" White in The Cub is not the 1930s leading man of the same name. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1915
Robert Cummings -- not to be confused with the same-named leading man of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s -- was the grey-eminence star of The Running Fight. Cummings was cast as a banker who destroys his business, and dozens of depositors by misappropriating funds for his own financial gain. In addition to wreaking havoc on the economic climate, the Banker also nearly ruins his daughter's (Violet Hemming) romance with a young lawyer (Thurlow Bergen). Some of the "bank panic" scenes in Running Fight -- notably the hysterical reaction of the banker's mistress -- neatly anticipate similar events in Frank Capra's Depression-era drama American Madness. Alas, the director of Running Fight was not mentioned in the reviews, and his name has been lost to history. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1915
Ivory Snuff Box was based on an espionage novel by Frederick Arnold Kummer. Stage star Holbrook Blinn plays an American spy who is dispatched to save the French from defeat at the hands of the Germans. The "maguffin" in the proceedings is the titular snuff box, which contains the....shhhh!....missing papers. The insidious Huns attempt to force Blinn's wife to reveal the whereabouts of the snuff box by subjecting her husband to deadly ultra-violet rays. Whoever said that James Bond was a brand-new idea in the 1950s? ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1914
The "little lady" of the title is Anna Grey (Jane Gray), the hometown sweetheart of country boy Perry Carlyle (James Cooley). Heading off to Washington D.C. to take a job with the Treasury Department, Perry succumbs to the seductions of the Big City, forgetting all about poor Anna. He reaches his personal nadir when he becomes sexually involved with blonde vamp Ruth Jordan (Jane Fearnley), who lures Perry into a counterfeiting scheme. Fortunately, Anna shows up in D.C. just in time to save Perry from committing a big-time Federal offense. Little Gray Lady was written by Channing Pollock, author of the now-notorious theatrical disaster The House Beautiful (described by Dorothy Parker as "the play lousy"). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1914
The Jungle, Upton Sinclair's searing expose of the meat-packing industry, was given a reasonably realistic screen treatment in 1914. The film traces the "progress" of a Lithuanian family as they head for the purportedly greener pastures of the USA. The family ends up in Packingtown (a thinly disguised Chicago), where they go to work at the stockyards and slaughterhouses. The famous scene wherein a man accidentally falls into the rendering vat is vividly realized. Upton Sinclair himself appears at the beginning and end of The Jungle as a form of endorsement. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
