Virginia Brown Faire

In his third Western for low-budget company Tiffany, Ken Maynard plays Ken Neville, a cowboy returning to the old homestead to find his father (Lafe McKee) and a fellow rancher (Robert Homans) killed. The dead neighbor's daughter, Mary Warner (Virginia Brown Faire), blames Ken, whom she believes to be the leader of a gang of rustlers. Overhearing a plot by Rance Collins (Frank Mayo) to rustle Mary's steers, Ken pretends to be looking to join the gang. Unfortunately, Ken's sidekick "Repeater" Simpson (Irving Bacon) unwittingly gives away his real identity and Rance has him locked up in a cabin. Aided by his wonder horse Tarzan, who breaks through a window, Ken makes his escape and is later able to round up the entire gang. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

From Big 4 Film Corp., Breed of the West stars former silent cowboy Wally Wales, in his second talkie, as Wally Weldon, a young cowboy who encounters a lost youth searching for his father. Wally takes the boy, Jim Bradley (Buzz Barton), back to the ranch where the kid obtains the job of cook's helper. While performing his duties, Jim learns that his immediate boss (George Gerwing) and Longrope Wheeler (Robert Walker), the ranch foreman, are planning to rob their employer, Colonel Sterner (Lafe McKee). When Wally finds Jim wounded by one of Longrope's henchmen, the Colonel admits to his daughter, Betty (Virginia Brown Faire), that the child is her long-lost brother. There is a second attempt to rob Sterner but Wally forces the cook to confess and the evil Longrope is arrested by the sheriff (Hank Bell). ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Universal's ruffled cowboy star Hoot Gibson and brunette Virginia Browne Faire played feuding ranchers in this average silent Western co-directed by Henry McRae and Herbert Blaché. The two ranchers get together to fight a common enemy, however, and fall in love. Based on William McLeod Raine's A Daughter of the Dons, this film is remembered only for Boris Karloff playing one of the thugs. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

A remake of a 1915 Tom Mix/Selig Western, this film was yet another silent oater (loosely) based on a story by popular pulp fiction writer Peter B. Kyne. Hoot Gibson starred as Chip Bennett, a Flying U ranch hand-turned-cartoonist, who despite being a confirmed misogynist falls in love with Della Whitmore (Virginia Brown Faire), a lady doctor and sister of his employer (DeWitt Jennings). To get the woman's attention, Chip fakes an accident and claims to have injured his ankle. Having submitted several of Chip's accomplished drawings to a receptive publisher, Della learns of the cowboy's deception and determines to give him the cold shoulder. Down but far from out, Chip kidnaps the girl from a dance and carries her off to a minister to be married. Like Mix before him, Gibson played the story entirely as a comedy, eschewing most of the usual Western trappings. The 1939 Johnny Mack Brown Western of the same name, although based on the same source material, substituted the original Battle-of-the-Sexes scenario for a straight sagebrush melodrama. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Although its popularity didn't endure, The Cricket on the Hearth was originally the favorite of Charles Dickens' Christmas Books (the most well-known today is, of course, A Christmas Carol. Director Lorimar Johnston makes an imposing Josiah Tackleton (also known as "Old Gruff"), and producer Paul Gerson is a handsome and likable John Peerybingle. The rest of the cast is filled with favorites of the silent era -- Fritzi Ridgeway has the pivotal role of Bertha Plummer, the blind girl, and character actor Josef Swickard is her father, Caleb. Virginia Brown Faire is Dot Peerybingle. Peerybingle marries his much-younger sweetheart Dot and they establish a happy home in the little village of Tindsley. Nearby lives a poor toymaker, Caleb Plummer who weaves idealistic fibs of his rich home and life for his blind daughter, Bertha. But Old Gruff, the town's most powerful figure, wants young, beautiful May Fielding (Margaret Landis), who loves Plummer's son Edward (Paul Moore). After knocking down Tackleton in a fight, Edward is forced to leave town for a year. He returns disguised as an old man in time to save May from a forced marriage to Tackleton. Tackleton, meanwhile, has played on Peerybingle's jealousy in an attempt to destroy his happiness, and Bertha has learned that her father's tales are untruths. But Edward has brought a fortune in Brazilian diamonds with him, enough to make his father's stories a reality. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Based on a 1921 story by Jackson Gregory, this silent Western starred Buck Jones as Montgomery Wilson Fitzsmith, a roaming cowboy who comes to the aid of a beleaguered group of Desert Valley ranchers who are fighting an unscrupulous capitalist, Jefferson Hoades (Malcolm Waite). Hoades has cornered the valley's costly water supply, but before Fitzsmith can join the side of the righteous, he most prove himself innocent of stealing a pie. With sheriff's deputy Eugene Pallette in hot pursuit, our hero encounters Mildred Dean (Virginia Brown Faire), whose father (J.W. Johnston), is put on trial for breaking the water pipeline. Fitzsmith gallops back to town and proves that the real culprit is Hoades. A chase ensues, and Fitzsmith bests the evil Hoades in a well-staged fistfight. Having signed with Fox in 1919, Buck Jones would become that studio's runner-up to the great Tom Mix. By the mid 1920s, Jones was almost rivaling Mix's popularity, having adopted a less flamboyant but still pleasing style of his own. Jones' stardom lasted until his tragic death in a Boston nightclub fire in 1942. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

It is said that every actor wants to play Shakespeare. Will Rogers would seem a likely exception to that rule, but here he is in this silent, taking a stab (albeit comic) at Romeo. Slim (Rogers), of course, begins as a cowpuncher but his boss switches from cattle to sheep, throwing him out of work. In addition his sweetheart, Lulu (Sylvia Breamer), says he should learn to be a real lover, like Douglas Fairbanks. So Slim decides to go work in motion pictures to discover how film folk make love. After he doubles for villains and heroes alike, Lulu changes her mind -- now she thinks Romeo and Juliet is the yardstick by which all lovers should be measured. So Slim obligingly gets his hands on a copy of the play and tries to read it. Naturally he falls asleep, but he dreams the story with himself and his girl in the title roles. When he awakes, however, he throws all technique out the window, grabs Lulu away from his rival (Raymond Hatton) and drags her off to the preache r. His show of force is what she wanted after all and the film ends happily. This was the final picture of Rogers' contract with the Goldwyn Studios. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

The comedy duo of Lew Fields and Joe Weber had parted ways for several years when they teamed up once again for this picture, based on the 1917 play by Samuel Shipman and Aaron Hoffman. As youths, Carl Pfeiffer (Fields) and Henry Block (Weber) came to America from Germany. Pfeiffer became a wholesale shoe dealer, while Block became a banker. In spite of their lines of work, they apparently save most oftheir energy for their unending arguments with each other. The latest dispute involves the Great War (the film takes place in the days just before America became involved). Block is completely patriotic towards his new country, while Pfeiffer wavers between Germany and the U.S. When his son, William (Jack Mulhall), decides to enlist, Pfeiffer is upset. He wants to keep the soldiers from going overseas, so he gives money to a fund run by Miller (Stuart Holmes) for that purpose. What he doesn't realize is that Miller is a spy, and he uses the money to sink the transport that is taking the soldiers to Europe. Pfeiffer is grief-stricken when he realizes he helped kill his own son -- but then William reappears, unharmed. As a result, Pfeiffer teams up with Block, who has joined the secret service, and Hilda Schwartz, another secret service agent (Lucille Lee Stewart), to capture Miller. William marries Block's daughter, June (Virginia Brown Faire), and their fathers go on to new quarrels. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Directed by action specialist Duke Worne and starring Worne's wife Virginia Brown Faire, this minor murder mystery featured newcomer Dean Jagger as a young man framed for the murder of his late father's enemy (Broderick O'Farrell). Convicted of the killing, Jagger is saved in the nick of time by the murdered man's daughter (Faire), who had been forced into marrying the real culprit (Wheeler Oakman). Produced by Poverty Row entrepreneurs Trem Carr and W. Ray Johnston, Handcuffed was only the second film for Jagger, a former stage juvenile and radio performer whose premature baldness became his trademark. Jagger would go on to win a deserved Academy Award as the retired major in Twelve O'Clock High (1949). ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

A remake of the silent When a Man Rides Alone (1919), this low-budget oater from the Big 4 Film Corp. stars Wally Wales as Wally Madison, a ranger investigating the robbery of a shipment of gold bullion. In a shootout with the gang, one of the robbers, José Valdez (Jack Phipps, is shot and killed. At the nearby Fernando ranch, Rosita Fernando (Virginia Browne Faire) is told to choose a husband from among the Valdez clan. She picks José. Upon learning of his demise, she charges the surviving brothers, Carlos (Franklyn Farnum) and Manuel (Edmund Cobb), with capturing his killer. Wally is caught and imprisoned at the ranch. Rosita falls in love with her captive, and when Don Francisco Fernando ($Lafe McKee}) is murdered, Wally concocts a plan to capture the killer, one of the Valdez brothers. Forcing Manuel to pose as the murdered Don Francisco, Wally lures Carlos to the ranch. There is a fierce duel with swords, after which Carlos is arrested by the rangers. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

The "mile-a-minute man" in this action quickie is one "Speedy" Rockett, played by William Fairbanks. Speedy's dad O. I. Rocket (George Periolat) is a car manufacturer, so it stands to reason that Rocket's top racecar driver is his own son. The plot thickens when Speedy falls in love with Paula Greydon (Virginia Brown Faire), the daughter of Rocket's chief rival. This modern-dress Romeo and Juliet dilemma is resolved to everyone's satisfaction during the climactic Big Race. Curiously, Mile a Minute Man was released sans production credits for it initial New York showing. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this crime drama, a down-on-his-luck attorney with connections to a diamond thief is framed for the thief's murder by the owner of the night club whose roof the body was found on. The attorney's daughter sets out to prove her father's innocence and gets a job singing at the club, becoming a local celebrity. With the help of an undercover reporter masquerading as a drunk, she proves that the night club owner was the real murderer, and he is killed in the end. ~ Steve Huey, All Movie Guide