James Kirkwood Movies
Durable American actor James Kirkwood opened up his film career at the Biograph studios in 1909 and closed it out with 1962's The Ugly American. The curly-haired, dependable-looking Kirkwood (described in an early Photoplay article as "one of those regular film 'troupers' who never fall down") occasionally interrupted his acting career for a spot of directing; in 1912 alone, he wielded the megaphone for nine pictures featuring Mary Pickford. Lacking the drive and organizational skills to excel as a director, Kirkwood willingly switched back to acting full-time by 1918. His silent film acting credits include D.W. Griffith's Home, Sweet Home (1914) and That Royale Girl (1926), costarring with W.C. Fields in the latter picture. Among Kirkwood's talking films were Over the Hill (1931), Charlie Chan's Chance (1933) and Joan of Arc (1949). His talkie roles frequently found Kirkwood on the wrong side of the law, as in the Tom Mix western My Pal the King (1932), wherein Kirkwood trapped boy-king Mickey Rooney in a rapidly flooding cellar. James Kirkwood's third wife was actress Lila Lee; their son was James Kirkwood Jr., co-author of the Broadway long-runner A Chorus Line. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide- 1917
Mary Miles Minter plays Liz Simpkins, daughter of the town drunk (Harvey Clark). Although motherless, Liz is nevertheless able to keep the Simpkins home in order and she wins the admiration of Henry Pennfield (George Fisher), the new minister. When Arnold Brice (Al Vosburgh), a young scoundrel of an artist, comes to town, Mildred Holcombe (Margaret Shelby), the daughter of the town's richest man (George Periolat), becomes infatuated with him. Liz finds out that Mildred has been sneaking over to Brice's home, and she goes over there to warn her that her brother (Arthur Howard) is on his way over. Mildred sneaks out the back, but Liz is caught hiding in Brice's bedroom. This causes a big scandal and it is decided that, since her father has died of his alcoholism, Liz will be sent to an institution. Mildred selfishly begs Liz to keep her secret, and, through overhearing their conversation, Pennfield learns the truth. At his next sermon, he announces that he's leaving the pulpit to marry Liz. He also informs Mildred and her family that he knows the truth. Brice picks up and leaves town and Pennfield goes to Liz, who is overjoyed to discover that he loves her. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
- 1917
Mary Miles Minter -- a seasoned and worldly young actress even at the age of 14 -- plays an impossibly naïve teenager in this comedy-drama. Lizette (Minter) is an orphan who is cared for by Granny Page, her dead father's landlady, and Granny's nephew, Paul (Eugene Ford). Paul has a newsstand and Lizette spends a lot of time there. One day she meets the wealthy Henry Faure (Harvey Clark), whose depression hasn't lifted since the death of his wife and child the year before. He is taken with Lizette and offers to adopt her, an offer to which Granny Page and Paul reluctantly agree. Lizette is happy in her new home, but when Faure has to go away on business for a few months, she's just as happy to spend time with Granny and Paul. When she finally comes home to Faure, she finds a baby abandoned on a doorstep, and, since Granny told her that babies come from heaven, she assumes that this one was meant to be hers. Of course, everyone else thinks she got the baby in a more earthly manner, and Faure demands to know who the father is. Confused by this, Lizette mentions Dan Nye (Ashton Dearholt), a good-looking neighborhood boy. Nye sees his chance for blackmail and offers to wed Lizette only if he's paid to do so. The truth comes out when the baby's real mother shows up and demands the baby's return. Nye is kicked out of the house and Lizette realizes she has a real sweetheart in Paul. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
- 1917
Even though she was not yet 15, Mary Miles Minter found herself typecast and playing the same kind of sweet, Pollyanna-like damsel over and over again. Here, she is Sylvia, the niece of a man who leaves her a fortune. The money is in the hands of his lawyer, Baxter (Harvey Clarke), who uses it to support his ambitious wife (Eugenie Forde) and daughter. Sylvia comes to Baxter's home and it's obvious she's not wanted there. Arnold, Baxter's son (George Fisher), is wasting his life away with drinking and nightclubbing, but Sylvia sweetly influences him to straighten up. When Arnold discovers that his father is spending all of Sylvia's fortune, he angrily forces him to return the money to her. The Baxters are destroyed at the thought of losing their ticket to the good life. Sylvia obligingly forgives them and asks them to share in her wealth. This is just as well, since she has promised herself to Arnold and they will soon be her in-laws. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
- 1916
Bertie (John Barrymore) is a bashful young man, and his sweetheart is just barely able to squeeze a marriage proposal out of him. His friends give him the usual bachelor bash, and on his way home, he's bashed on the head by some thugs. The result is that he loses his memory and winds up in the hands of the crooks. The gang takes him to rob a house, which coincidentally just happens to belong to his fiancée's family. When he sees the girl, his memory starts to come back, and he helps capture the crooks. After an operation, Bertie and his sweetheart are reunited. This comedy-drama was an extremely lightweight vehicle for John Barrymore. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
- 1915
Combining the star appeal of Mary Pickford with this fairy tale seemed like a sure thing to Famous Players-Paramount. Releasing it around Christmas time just about guaranteed big box-office receipts. But except for a few inspired moments (in one, the clock's hands strike 12 and promptly shrivel up), the picture is disappointing. Perhaps Cinderella was too passive a role for Pickford's normally high-spirited approach; her performance here is flat. The photography, too, is poor, and trade paper Variety suggests that the studio rushed through filming to get that all-important holiday release. The story is really far too well known to relate, but in any case here's a brief recap: Cinderella is mistreated by her nasty stepmother (Isabel Vernon) and two homely stepsisters (Georgia Wilson and Lucille Carney). But when Prince Charming (Owen Moore, Pickford's then-husband) throws a ball, she manages to make it there with the help of a fairy godmother (and a few handy dissolves -- they were many decades away from computer effects in 1914). But when the clock strikes 12, Cinderella dashes home, losing her glass slipper along the way. The prince searches all over for the shoe's owner, finally places it on Cinderella's dainty foot and they "live happily ever after." Pickford's marriage to Moore, however, ended in divorce by the end of the 1910s and she married Douglas Fairbanks, who, for quite a long while, was a real-life Prince Charming (although, unfortunately, their marriage didn't last, either). ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Mary Pickford, Owen Moore, (more)
- 1915
Having played a modern actress in Behind the Scenes (1914), Mary Pickford took on the legendary 17th Century Nell Gwynn, the mistress of Charles II about whom it was said, "England would be worse than a Puritan funeral without her." Pickford's Nell dons male garb in order to intercept a letter from the treacherous Louise, Duchess of Portsmouth (Ruby Hoffman) to Louis XIII of France, thus saving England from the evil schemes concocted by Louise and the Duke of Buckingham (Arthur Hoops). Filmed on locastion in Connecticut, Mistress Nell was based on a stage play by George C. Hazelton, Jr. Pickford's husband, Owen Moore, co-starred as Charles II, a rather tricky situation if rumors about an affair between Pickford and director James Kirkwood were true. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- 1915
Practically the whole Pickford clan showed up in Fanchon the Cricket. Mary Pickford plays the granddaughter of a woman suspected of being a witch. The poor girl is rescued from the torments of her peers by the hero. She reciprocates by nursing him through an illness, and also by rescuing his feeble-minded brother from an unhappy fate. Pickford's siblings Jack and Lottie played supporting roles, but the main attraction was the film debut of teenaged dance team Fred and Adele Astaire--before they hit it big on Broadway. Frances Marion adapted Fanchon the Cricket from a novel by George Sand; curiously, considering the historical significance of the film, Marion had no memory of working on it when asked in the 1960s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1915
Henry Arthur Jones' stage play The Masqueraders was retooled to accommodate the talents of Hazel Dawn in this five-reel Famous Players production. Dawn plays Dulcie Larendie, a penniless English girl who makes the mistake of marrying for wealth rather than love. Her new husband, millionaire Sir Brice Skene (Frank Losee), turns out to be a drunk and a wife-beater. For a while, it looks as if Dulcie is condemned to spend the rest of her life with this monster, but fortunately for the purposes of the plot Sir Brice is murdered by one of his less-savory companions. Will Dulcie's cast-off sweetheart David Remon (Eliot Dexter) swallow his pride and take her back? ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1915
Marrable (John Mason) is a robber who wants to change his ways, but his cronies want him to do one last job. Unfortunately, the mark happens to be the father (Russell Bassett of Gerald Austin (David Powell), who is engaged to Marrable's daughter, Margaret (Hazel Dawn). One of the gang accidentally kills Austin, and while they are trying to figure out what to do, Gerald, who has overheard them, comes out of his hiding place. Marrable is ordered to get rid of Gerald, and the others leave the two men together with a time bomb. When Marrable discovers that Gerald once saved his life, he lets him go free. But as he throws the bomb out the window, it explodes and kills him instead. This picture was adapted from the play by C. Haddon Chambers. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
- 1915
Despite having been written by her trusted friends, Marshall Neilan and Frances Marion, this melodrama set in Alaska emerged as one of Mary Pickford's few failures. She played Little Pal, a half-breed Eskimo girl whose prospector father loses his life to the brutal Black Brand (Joseph Manning). Black Brand wants to possess the girl, and she seeks refuge with a handsome but ailing Easterner (George Anderson). Naturally, they fall in (platonic) love, but the Easterner already has a wife (Constance Johnson) who arrives to bring her husband back to civilization. He cannot afford to go, but Little Pal, out of sheer love and devotion, steals some gold dust from a rival claim in order to provide him with travel money. Black Brand is suspected of the theft and shot, while Little Pal can only watch as her beloved departs with his wife. In the original script, Little Pal commits suicide, but apparently the producers, Famous Players-Lasky, tagged on a happy ending in which Little Pal finds romance with an old chum, Cultus (Bert Hadley). Both contemporary and modern critics dismiss the film in general and Pickford's unusually lifeless portrayal in particular. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- 1915
The relationship between a plucky daughter and her brutish father is dissected in this classic Mary Pickford drama set in a mining community. Pickford plays "Rags," a pretty but wild girl who defends her alcoholic father (J. Farrell MacDonald), a disgraced bank cashier, no matter how he mistreats her. Enter a handsome engineer (Marshall Neilan), whose family had once fired Rag's father for theft. Rags falls in love but realizes that marriage is a hopeless proposition considering her lowly place in society. But when she learns that her father plans to rob the newcomer, Rags betrays him to the sheriff, and he is shot in the ensuing battle. Before he expires, however, the old man writes to his former employer to take care of Rags. She journeys East, becomes a proper lady, and can soon plan a future with the handsome engineer. Written for the screen by Frances Marion and Pickford herself, Rags was based on a novel by Edith Barnard Delano, whose Hulda from Holland was filmed by Pickford the following year. According to her own account, it was seeing her name in lights on Broadway advertising Rags that persuaded Mary Pickford to re-negotiate her contract with Famous Players-Lasky (Paramount). ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- 1915
Mary Pickford essays the title character in Esmeralda. She plays a country lass who leaves her home after valuable gold ore is found on her land. She returns home to participate in an arranged marriage, but at the last moment runs off with her true love. At four reels (approximately 50 minutes), this was one of Pickford's shortest starring vehicles for Famous Players. It also had a hurried, rubber-stamp look about it, something Pickford was able to avoid when she took full charge of her films at United Artists. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1915
Dawn of a Tomorrow was another winner from the felicitous writer-star team of Frances Marion and Mary Pickford. "America's Sweetheart" plays a girl of the London slums whose sweetheart David Powell is in danger of succumbing to a life of crime. Our Mary puts Powell on the right track, then assures her financial future by rescuing millionaire Forrest Robinson from drowning. Dawn of a Tomorrow was adapted from a play by Frances Hodgson Burnett, of Little Princess and Little Lord Fauntleroy fame. As a result of this and other Pickford hits, the 21-year-old actress soon found herself the highest-paid woman in America. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1914
This Reliance four-reeler starred Dorothy Gish as the title character, a rambunctious frontier dance-hall gal named Nell. When a dissolute, drunken Easterner (Henry B. Walthall) arrives in town, he proves easy prey to the local bullies and sharpsters. But Nell takes pity on the stranger and nurses him back to health. The redemption turns out to be two-tiered: Completely recovered, the Easterner marries Nell and rescues her from her wild-and-wooly environs. Though Dorothy Gish made several westerns, she was deathly afraid of horses, the result of a traumatic accident in her youth. Among the Reliance"regulars" appearing in minor roles are James Kirkwood (who also directed), Donald Crisp and Walter Long. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1914
Forced by the dictates of his Biograph contract to give up directing in favor of "supervising," D.W. Griffith left the studio as soon as possible. Thus, though Griffith is credited as supervisor of the 4-reel Classmates, he actually had very little to do with the production. The story concerns four West Point cadets, one of whom, played by Henry B. Walthall, is unjustly expelled in his junior year. Vowing vengeance against the student who engineered his dismissal, Walthall follows the man to the steamy jungles of South America, where through various acts of conspicuous bravery he is at last able to clear his own name. Based on a play by Margaret Turnbull and William C. DeMille, Classmates was remade in 1924 with Richard Barthelmess in the lead. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1914
Home Sweet Home has been referred to by its leading lady Lillian Gish as "the first all-star film." Indeed, virtually every member of director D.W.Griffith's celebrated stock company appears in this three-part, five-reel biographical drama. Based on the life of John Howard Payne, composer of the "world-famous" title song, the film stars Henry B. Walthall as Payne, herein depicted as a brilliant but unstable artist who never found the happiness embodied in his songs. As incidents in Payne's life are enacted on the screen -- his early failures, his success as a playwright in England and as a composer in France, and his lonely, embittered final years in Africa -- these scenes are counterpointed with three "sub-stories," in which the song Home Sweet Home is shown to have a profound effect on several different people. In Episode One, a western miner (Robert Harron) nearly leaves his waitress sweetheart Mae Marsh), but they are reunited to the strains of the Payne song. In Episode Two, the song causes a faithless wife (Blanche Sweet) to renounce her lover (Owen Moore) and return to her husband (Courtenay Foote). And in the final episode, two quarrelling brothers (Donald Crisp and James Kirkwood) kill each other, leaving their grieving mother to find solace in the familiar strains of Home Sweet Home. Though Lillian Gish also spoke respectfully of her artistic collaborations with D.W. Griffith, even she found the film's final scene -- in which, dressed as Heavenly angel, she rescues John Howard Payne from the bowels of Hell -- a bit difficult to watch with a straight face. This silly denouement aside, Home Sweet Home, a joint effort of the Reliance and Mutual film companies, was quite wonderful entertainment, and one of the most successful of Griffith's pre-Birth of a Nation endeavors. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lillian Gish, Dorothy Gish, (more)
- 1914
Mary Pickford's stardom was still very much on the ascendant when she made this film for Famous Players. The Mornes are Virginia mountain people, and the head of the clan (Robert Broderick) is a moonshiner. His son, Lancer (James Kirkwood, also the film's director), goes off to college, but he returns when his father is arrested by revenuers. Anemone (Pickford), the niece of Mrs. Breckinridge (Ida Waterman), draws the attention of Fisher Morne, Lancer's crude cousin (Harry C. Browne). Fisher abducts Anemone, but Lancer decides he wants her for himself. The two men battle it out and Lancer marries Anemone against her will. She claims to hate him so he declares that the marriage will be "in name only" until she decides she loves him. Anemone returns to her aunt, but when she finds out that the revenuers are on Lancer's trail, she warns him and is by his side to chase them off. They end the film together. Pickford's brother, Jack Pickford, has a bit part as "a young Clansman." The studio re-released this film in the fall of 1918 -- Pickford had just made a couple of poor films (How Could You, Jean? and Johanna Enlists), and they thought one of her older films could help redeem her at the box office. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
- 1914
Based on a popular stage play, the Biograph three-reeler Strongheart was originally released in May of 1913. The film was reviewed by the trade magazine Variety on the occasion of its April 1914 reissue, staged to cash in on the popularity of leading man Henry B. Walthall. After itemizing the differences between Walthall's interpretation of the leading character and the performance offered on stage by Robert Edeson, the trade magazine Variety concluded that both men delivered strong and distinctive characterizations. The son of an Indian chief, Strongheart heads out into the "white" world, where he excels in college. He becomes a football hero (a la Jim Thorpe) and wins the heart of the prettiest girl on campus. But upon finding out that his father is dead, Strongheart forsakes his new lifestyle, returning to assume leadership of his tribe. Along the way, the film includes an obligatory "collegiate" subplot, wherein Strongheart nobly rescues his best friend from being expelled for cheating on the football field. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1914
The Mutual four-reeler The Floor Above was based on a novel by the indefatigable E. Phillips Oppenheim. In one of her first starring vehicles, Dorothy Gish plays Stella Ford, a coquettish chorus girl. Despite the fact that she's married, Stella enjoys the attentions of millionaire Stephen Pryde (Henry B. Walthall). Her predilection for walking on the wild side has disastrous results when another of her erstwhile beaux, a slicker named Bartlett (Earl Foxe), is found murdered in her apartment. This experience causes the irresponsible Stella to grow up in a real hurry and also rekindles the romance between herself and her long-suffering hubby. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1914
Mary Pickford played a struggling actress who marries a farmer in this sometimes poignant drama directed by James Kirkwood. Rescued from a life on the wicked stage by farmer Steve Hunter (Kirkwood), Dolly Lane (Pickford) soon tires of rural life and is easily lured back East by unscrupulous impresario Joe Canby (Russell Bassett). She becomes a big star and Canby comes to collect his reward. Perilously close to suffering a fate worse than death, Dolly is once again rescued by the stalwart Steve. Pickford and Kirkwood collaborated on nine films and the handsome actor-director also directed her closest rival, the less talented Mary Miles Minter. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
