Fred Montague Movies

Booted out of his own home by his snobbish father, wealthy playboy Laurence Percival Van Huyler (Franklin Farnum) is forced to make his own way in the world. Accordingly, he trades in his fancy duds for a pair of faded overalls and takes a job as a construction worker. While tearing down an old building, our hero finds an ancient document which states that the supposedly blue-blooded Van Huylers were actually descended from the McCartys, a family of Shanty Irish immigrants. Armed with this document, Laurence forces his pretentious family to give up their high-society airs and begin behaving within the perimeters of Good Old American Democracy. And, yes, he wins the love of haughty socialite Alicia (Juanita Hansen), who rather enjoys being treated like "Just Folks." ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Almost the entire Jesse L. Lasky stock company was trotted out for this minor offering starring stage actor Edward Abeles and Theodore Roberts as a couple of prospectors who get involved with greedy city types on a business trip to New York. The film was the first to be shot entirely on Lasky's new ranch at Wilson Canyon in the San Fernando Valley. The ranch, managed by one Hosea Steelman who also played bit parts, included "varied scenery such as streams, woods, mountain peaks, abandoned mines, ore dumps, miners' huts, and an Indian camp of 35 tepees." ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

This is the first film in which budding filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille received full credit as a director. Set in the wild Canadian North, the adventure yarn centers upon a brave young trader who is one of the few to work independently from the monopolizing Hudson Bay Company. The young trader is looking for the man who killed his father after smearing his good name by claiming that his father slept with the wife of the owner of a trading post. The trouble for the young man begins when he is caught by Hudson Bay thugs and forced to make it through the wilds with neither food nor weapons. Somehow he barely manages to survive the harsh environment. Towards the end, the daughter of his father's killer shows up and helps save him. Later the trading post owner, who is just about to die, tells everyone the truth about the killing. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Oscar Apfel, the man who collaborated with Cecil B. DeMille on the direction of the pioneering feature film The Squaw Man, wielded the megaphone for the Jesse L. Lasky production The Master Mind. Repeating his stage role, Edmund Breese plays Henry Allen, a revenge-driven ex-convict who hopes to get even with the judge who mistakenly sentenced Henry's brother to the gallows. He arranges for the judge to fall in love with a "woman of the world," then exposes the magistrate as a hedonistic fraud. Eventually, however, Henry has a change of heart and decides to allow the judge and his sweetheart to live out their lives unmolested. Based on a play by Daniel D. Carter, The Master Mind was remade in 1920 with Lionel Barrymore in the old Edmund Breese role. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Betraying its origin, David Belasco's popular stage melodrama The Squaw Man reached the screen in February of 1914, courtesy of the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company. Already an old wheeze by then, the story of miscegenation in the Old West was supposed to have been filmed on locations near Flagstaff, Arizona. Young Cecil B. DeMille, who was to share directorial duties with veteran stage performer Oscar Apfel, and the Lasky crew arrived in the middle of a storm and decided to remain on the train until the final destination. Debarking in sunny Los Angeles, the Lasky people rented half of a barn in the suburb of Hollywood where the Squaw Man finally went before the camera on December 29, 1913. The finished 6-reel-long melodrama thus became the first feature western to be shot entirely in Hollywood. The result is a terribly dull but typical Victorian romance about a English peer (Dustin Farnum) falsely accused of a crime actually committed by his brother. He escapes to the American West and marries an Indian maiden (Red Wing). Years later, on his deathbed, the brother confesses, thus freeing the hero to reclaim title and lands. The Indian wife, meanwhile, has conveniently murdered someone and is herself killed, leaving the Englishman able to return to home and hearth without suffering the embarrassment of being called a "Squaw Man." DeMille remained strangely sentimental about this -- his screen debut -- and filmed the play twice more, in 1918 starring Elliott Dexter, and again in 1931 starring Warner Baxter. The story didn't improve with age. The location of the now-famous Lasky barn, on Selma Avenue near Vine Street, became the headquarters of Paramount when Lasky merged with competitor Adolph Zukor. It remains today as the oldest film company located in geographical Hollywood. Always on the verge of being torn down, the old barn later saw duty as a gymnasium and, later still, was the train depot in the Bonanza television series. In the 1980s, the barn was moved to a new location on Odin Street near the Hollywood Bowl and functioned as a studio museum. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

Produced at the famous Lasky barn near Hollywood and Vine, Where the Trail Divides was a sober depiction of the relationship between a white girl (Winifred Kingston) and a college-educated Native American (Robert Edeson). Their marriage breaks up when she cannot face being called a "squaw," but her next lover, a white man, proves a tyrannical brute. One reviewer termed the film "halting, not quite sure of its ground." Featured actress Constance Adams was the wife of Lasky collaborator Cecil B. DeMille. The location for geographical Hollywood's first feature films, the Lasky barn was relocated to nearby Highland Avenue in the 1980s and functioned as the Hollywood Studio Museum. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi