Tully Marshall Movies

Before getting a "lock" on his "All-American Boy" screen persona, Charles Ray appeared in several films along the lines of A Painted Soul. Ray plays a young artist who, after gaining fame for a portrait titled "The Painted Soul," seeks inspiration for his next work, "The Fallen Woman." He finds it in the form of beautiful but downtrodden prostitute Bessie Barriscale. As work on the portrait progresses, the artist and his model fall in love -- whereupon Ray's mother, evidently inspired by Camille, begs the girl to break off the romance so as not to destroy her son's future. Tearfully conceding that she must be cruel to be kind, Barriscale runs out into the streets and deliberately propositions a detective, knowing that she will be arrested and thus disgraced in Ray's eyes. The Painted Soul was the tenth of Charles Ray's starring vehicles for 1915. ~ 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

This spoof of temperance melodrama is the last two-reeler directed by Tod Browning. The virtuous John (Jack Brammall) learns that he will inherit one million dollars providing that he refrains from drinking beer before he reaches the age of 21. His dastardly cousin Henry (Tully Marshall), knowing that he will receive the inheritance if John should imbibe, goes to extreme lengths to dupe John into drinking beer. When all else fails, he resorts to kidnapping him on the day of he turns 21, but John is rescued in the nick of time by the loyal Nell (Teddy Sampson). 16/2rl ~ Nicole Gagne, All Movie Guide

Although this classic Charles Dickens tale was filmed at least twice previously, this Lasky version was the first to really do it justice. Perhaps casting 25-year-old actress Marie Doro as the orphan Oliver Twist was questionable, but then, this was the era where Mary Pickford played children into her mid-thirties. The rest of the casting was utterly solid, with great silent character actor Tully Marshall as Fagin and stage and silent star Hobart Bosworth as Bill Sykes. As much attention was paid to the smaller roles, with James Neil putting in a crusty, yet tender portrayal of Grimwig, the churlish pal of the kindly Mr. Brownlow. London's sordid nineteenth century slums are well-depicted too -- in fact, some critics of the 1910s felt the scenery too unpleasant to appeal to film patrons of the era. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

When New England schoolmarm Faith Miller (Anita King) comes West to inspect a mine she has bought, she discovers it is a fake. But she finds a savior in the rough cow town in which she has landed -- Jim Ralston (Wallace Reid). With the help of the deputy sheriff, he "salts" the mine to trick the crooked promoter into buying it back from Faith. But there is more trouble afoot -- the sheriff is murdered by two outlaws and Jim is accused of the crime. Jim is set to be hung when the real killer admits to the dirty deed. The posse rounds up all the bad guys including arch villain Henry Slade (Tully Marshall) and all is well with Faith and Jim. This was one of Wallace Reid's lesser programmers. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Reportedly, director Cecil B. DeMille and leading lady Mary Pickford did not see eye to eye during the making of this lavish Western melodrama filmed on location among the giant redwoods in northern California. "Little Mary" actually plays a female her own age this time (maybe that was the trouble) as a young woman whose father is killed in an Indian raid. Pickford falls for a dashing outlaw (Elliott Dexter), whom she later frees after his inevitable capture by persuading the sheriff (Walter Long) that she is pregnant. Amazingly, the ruse works and they are allowed to plan a future together in freedom. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

The Whispering Chorus was arguably the closest Cecil B. DeMille ever came to making an "art" picture. Stalwart DeMille supporting player Raymond Hatton gave the performance of his career as embezzling bank clerk John Trimble. Hoping to escape punishment for his crimes, Trimble arranges for an anonymous, mutilated corpse to be identified as his own then starts life over again with a new identity. Several years later, however, Trimble is caught in a web of circumstantial evidence, and ends up being put on trial for his own murder! Prepared to reveal his true identity, Trimble is begged not to do so by his dying mother (Edythe Chapman), since such a revelation would bring disgrace upon Trimble's "widow" Jane (Kathryn Williams), who has since become the wife of Governor George Cogswell (Elliot Dexter) and is currently pregnant with her second husband's baby. Not wishing to see his wife branded a bigamist and her unborn child labelled a bastard, Trimble maintains his silence and willingly goes to the gallows. Some of the special-effects work in The Whispering Chorus bordered on the miraculous, especially the sequence in which Trimble is "surrounded" by the voices of his Thoughts, but what lingers longest in the memory are the performances by Raymond Hatton and Edythe Chapman. Unfortunately, The Whispering Chorus was a resounding failure at the box office, convincing director DeMille to ever afterward forsake "Art" in favor of gaudy showmanship. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

We Can't Have Everything was at once a typical Cecil B. DeMille marital comedy and also a satire of the whole genre. Aware that her wealthy husband Peter (Thurston Hall) is cheating on her, socialite Charity Cheever (Kathlyn Williams) nonetheless remains faithful to him, spurning the affections of her former suitor Jim Dyckman (Elliot Dexter). Advised by Charity to find a "nice girl" for himself, Jim ignores her and goes ga-ga over mercenary movie starlet Kedzie Thropp (Wanda Hawley). Meanwhile, Charity finally divorces her husband, only to discover that Jim is now beyond her reach. Fortunately for Charity, Kedzie grows weary of her marriage to Jim and sets her sights for a British nobleman (Raymond Hatton). Kedzie sues Jim for divorce, citing Charity as co-respondent. The result is a happy ending for Charity and Jim, and a deliciously ironic denouement for the scheming Kedzie. The highlight of We Can't Have Everything was the scene in which Kedzie's movie studio catches fire, an episode reportedly inspired by a real-life blaze which occurred on the Paramount lot. Also worth noting was the performance of Tully Marshall as a pompous movie director -- a sly takeoff of the film's actual director, C.B. DeMille. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Previously filmed in 1915, the Bret Harte story M'liss served as one of Mary Pickford's most memorable vehicles. The "terror" of Red Gulch, the hoydenish M'liss (Pickford) spends most of her time dragging her scraggly father Bummer Smith (Ernest Torrence) home from the local bordello. As such, M'liss has very little time for romance, and when she finally receives her first chaste kiss from new schoolmaster Allan Gray (Thomas Gray), she rushes to the bawdy-house Madam for advice! Eventually, M'liss wins her man through virtuous means, pausing long enough to save an innocent man from being hung for the crimes committed by a local outlaw. The finale features a decidedly uncharacteristic moment when "America's Sweetheart" looks on approvingly as the real crook is strung up from the nearest tree! M'liss was remade in 1922 as The Girl Who Rand Wild, then again under its original title in 1936. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Listed in some sources under the title The Thing We Love, this Wallace Reid vehicle was directed by another popular matinee idol, Lou Tellegen. Reid plays the young vice-president of an American munitions factory, which unbeknownst to our hero is being undermined by a gang of German-American subversives. The head villain, played by Tully Marshall, methodically wires the plant with explosives under cover of night. On the verge of blowing the factory into oblivion, Marshall is exposed by Reid, who then must race against time to save himself and his fellow workers from a horrible death. Suffice to say that he succeeds, and marries Kathlyn Williams, the company's chief stockholder, in the bargain. The film's nondescript title may have been a reaction to a recent drop-off of interest in war-oriented films. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Cecil B. DeMille made The Squaw Man three times; this silent version was the second one. While the 1914 Squaw Man bears more historical significance (as it went a long way in establishing Hollywood as the heart of the film industry), this 1918 version is, by far, the better film, with higher production values and a more sophisticated approach. To briefly recap the plot, James Wynnegate (Elliott Dexter) travels to Wyoming after a scandal involving an embezzlement. His cousin, Henry (Thurston Hall), is the guilty one, but Wynnegate takes the blame out of love for Henry's wife, Lady Diana (Katherine MacDonald). In Wyoming, Wynnegate saves an Indian maiden, Naturich (Anna Little), from the advances of the villainous Cash Hawkins (Jack Holt). Wynnegate and Naturich marry, and she then murders Hawkins. Lady Diana comes to Wyoming to tell Wynnegate that Henry was killed on a hunting trip and confessed to the embezzlement before he died. Naturich, feeling she is in her husband's way, commits suicide. Wynnegate, now the Earl of Kerhill, returns to England with Lady Diana and his half-Indian son (Pat Moore). At the time this drama was made, DeMille was only just becoming known for creating film spectaculars; this production was an assurance that this reputation would grow. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

This comedy-drama was adapted from the play by Charles Klein. Maggie Pepper (Ethel Clayton) is an outspoken young salesclerk who is taking care of her sister-in-law's child while she is serving time for shoplifting. Maggie has just turned down a marriage proposal from salesman Jake Rothschild (Raymond Hatton) when she meets Joe Holbrook (Elliott Dexter), the store's owner. She mistakes Holbrook for a man looking for a job and tells him to stay away from the company. Instead of being angry, Holbrook admires her spirit and realizes she actually has some good ideas. Although he is engaged to another girl, he begins to see that Maggie is the better choice. Nevertheless, she winds up being discharged because of her co-workers' jealousy. The sister-in-law gets out of jail and returns to her old ways. Maggie is determined to keep the child away from her and accepts a job offer in Pittsburgh. There is an attempt to take the child away from Maggie, but Holbrook comes to her rescue. Finally, he convinces her that they are meant to be together. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide