Alberta Lee Movies

Gladys Walton, who starred in many Universal Studios programmers in the early 1920s, was always good at playing working class girls. Here she's Mary Ann McKee, who's employed in an overall factory. As a joke, she slips a love letter into a pair of overalls, which eventually are purchased by Bill Carter, a country blacksmith (Edward Hearne). His friends send Mary Ann a letter, claiming that Carter is a millionaire in search of a bride, and sign his name. But Mary Ann is involved with Red Mike, a mean-tempered crook (George Cooper), and he doesn't find anything funny about the situation. He forces her to assist him in robbing a modiste's shop, but the police show up. Mary Ann manages to evade them, but Red Mike is captured and sent to prison. With him out of the way, Mary Ann packs her bags and heads for Carter. They end up falling in love and getting married. A baby completes their happiness. But then Red Mike gets out of prison and he comes looking for Mary Ann to take her back. She manages to bluff her way through the situation, and then he has a religious vision which inspires him to go straight. He realizes he has no place in Mary Ann's life and leaves her and Carter alone. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

A man who believes he is a murderer travels the world to escape his past in this often confusing crime drama. Richard Dix stars in a double role of twin brothers Paul and Arthur Ellison. Arthur flees New York for South America for help from his brother Paul, an engineer by trade. Paul feels partially responsible for Arthur's behavior after he accidentally shot him in a childhood mishap. Arthur assumed his brother's identity and travels to the Orient. Sylvia (Elsa Chetwood) meets him five years later and assumes he is Paul. Romance between the two lead to marriage plans, but an oily gambler named Craig (Herbert Prior) is on board the ship bound for America. Prior tries to kill Arthur and collect the reward money to cover his debts. Arthur holds a diamond given to him by a grateful native prince after saving people from a plague. A final showdown between Arthur and the gambler reveals Prior was the one who committed the murder that has tormented Arthur the last five years. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

The Fox Studios promoted Johnnie Walker and Edna Murphy to star status in this college days/thriller hybrid. Bob Harding (Walker) is the star player of his college football team. His sweetheart is Rena Austin (Murphy), who is a telegraph operator back home. She's the one who informs Bob that his father has died, and he returns home to discover that bad investments have left no more money for college. His mother (Alberta Lee) is swindled by two crooks who take an option on her property for 1,500 dollars. Bob finds out that the land is worth 25,000 dollars to a railroad company and tries to get the option back from the swindlers. They offer to let him have it if he returns to college and throws the football game. Bob, of course, refuses, so they kidnap him. He is able to get away just long enough to telegraph Rena for help. She sends for the police and soon he's on a train headed for the game. A speeding train isn't fast enough, so an airplane picks him up from the train's roof and drops him off at the field. He shows up just in time to score the winning points for his team. Since Rena's father (Wilbur Higby) has stolen the option, Bob is able to continue his education. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Certified male Casson Ferguson plays the title character in Alias Mary Brown. Left in reduced circumstances after his parents are driven to their deaths by an insensitve family, Ferguson takes revenge by robbing that family's household. To cover his tracks, he disguises himself as a woman (rather convincingly, if we can judge by the film's contemporary reviews). After a series of exciting adventures and hairbreadth escapes, Ferguson reclaims his manhood and falls in love with pretty Pauline Starke. Alias Mary Brown was based on a story by E. Magnus Ingleton, a female author (we think). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Sometime during the shooting of the landmark The Birth of a Nation, filmmaker D.W. Griffith probably wondered how he could top himself. In 1916, he showed how, with the awesome Intolerance. The film began humbly enough as a medium-budget feature entitled The Mother and the Law, wherein the lives of a poor but happily married couple are disrupted by the misguided interference of a "social reform" group. A series of unfortunate circumstances culminates in the husband's being sentenced to the gallows, a fate averted by a nick-of-time rescue engineered by his wife. In the wake of the protests attending the racist content of The Birth of a Nation, Griffith wanted to demonstrate the dangers of intolerance. The Mother and the Law filled the bill to some extent, but it just wasn't "big" enough to suit his purposes. Thus, using The Mother and the Law as merely the base of the film, Griffith added three more plotlines and expanded his cinematic thesis to epic proportions. The four separate stories of Intolerance are symbolically linked by Lillian Gish as the Woman Who Rocks the Cradle ("uniter of the here and hereafter"). The "Modern Story" is essentially The Mother and the Law; the "French Story" details the persecution of the Huguenots by Catherine de Medici (Josephine Crowell); the "Biblical Story" relates the last days of Jesus Christ (Howard Gaye); and the "Babylonian Story" concerns the defeat of King Belshazzar (Alfred Paget) by the hordes of Cyrus the Persian (George Siegmann).

Rather than being related chronologically, the four stories are told in parallel fashion, slowly at first, and then with increasing rapidity. The action in the film's final two reels leaps back and forth in time between Babylon, Calvary, 15th century France, and contemporary California. Described by one historian as "the only film fugue," Intolerance baffled many filmgoers of 1916 -- and, indeed, it is still an exhausting, overwhelming experience, even for audiences accustomed to the split-second cutting and multilayered montage sequences popularized by Sergei Eisenstein, Orson Welles, Jean-Luc Godard, Joel Schumacher, and MTV. On a pure entertainment level, the Babylonian sequences are the most effective, played out against one of the largest, most elaborate exterior sets ever built for a single film. The most memorable character in this sequence is "The Mountain Girl," played by star on the rise Constance Talmadge; when the Babylonian scenes were re-released as a separate feature in 1919, Talmadge's tragic death scene was altered to accommodate a happily-ever-after denouement. Other superb performances are delivered by Mae Marsh and Robert Harron in the Modern Story, and by Eugene Pallette and Margery Wilson in the French Story. Remarkably sophisticated in some scenes, appallingly naïve in others, Intolerance is a mixed bag dramatically, but one cannot deny that it is also a work of cinematic genius. The film did poorly upon its first release, not so much because its continuity was difficult to follow as because it preached a gospel of tolerance and pacifism to a nation preparing to enter World War I. Currently available prints of Intolerance run anywhere from 178 to 208 minutes; while it may be rough sledding at times, it remains essential viewing for any serious student of film technique. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Norma Talmadge, already a star but not yet a STAR, played the eponymous heroine in 1916's Martha's Vindication. To protect the reputation of her best friend Dorothea (Seena Owen, Martha claims that she is the mother of the friend's illegitimate baby. Even though she is ostracized and condemned by the community in general and fire-and-brimstone preacher Hunt (Ralph Lewis) in particular, Martha refuses to tell the whole story, nor will she permit her friend -- now happily married and the mother of a legitimate child -- to speak up. Only Martha's sweetheart William (Charles West) stands by her in her hour of need, and even he has his doubts. But as indicated by the film's title, Martha is eventually proven to be as pure as the driven snow. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In one of her autobiographies, Lillian Gish reprinted in toto the studio synopsis of the D.W. Griffith production The Lily and the Rose, then commented wryly "Now that's what I call a plot!" Wilfred Lucas plays a virile man-about-town who weds "The Lily" (Gish), only to cast her aside in favor of a sexy cabaret dancer called "The Rose" (played by Rozsika Dolly, of the Dolly Sisters). The Lily does not suspect her husband of hanky-panky until she receives an anonymous letter informing her of the fact. Hoping to win back her husband's love, she painstakingly learns a popular society dance and performs it for him. This just isn't good enough, thus husband and wife come to a parting of the ways. The Lily returns to her family home in the Deep South, while The Rose accompanies the husband to a seashore mansion. Eventually, the husband grows tired of the shallow dancer, and begins yearning for the sincerity and fidelity of his wife. Hoping to effect a reconciliation, hubby is crestfallen to learn that The Lily has already filed for divorce. Sadly, he retires to his backyard and kills himself, whereupon The Rose, concerned only for herself, callously walks out, leaving the corpse to the mercy of the seagulls. Gish was certainly right about that plot -- which, incidentally, was based on an unpublished novel by producer Griffith. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide