Gertrude Olmstead Movies

The Lone Wolf, the gentleman thief created by Louis Joseph Vance, made his talking-picture debut in Columbia's The Lone Wolf's Daughter (the film was essentially silent, save for an opening dialogue sequence). Bert Lytell, who'd essayed the title role so often during the silent era, again appears as Michael Lanyard, alias the Lone Wolf. Promising to reform his ways for the sake of his adopted daughter (Florence Allen), Lanyard is obliged to revert to his old tricks to prevent a jewel robbery. Scotland Yard is convinced that Lanyard has not reformed, but he proves otherwise when he turns the genuine miscreants over to the authorities. Unavailable in recent years for reappraisal, The Lone Wolf's Daughter was remade in 1939 as The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt, easily the best-ever entry in Columbia's long-running Lone Wolf series. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this musical comedy, an egotistical ex-college football star had little time for a plain-jane coed while he was in school. When they later find work at the same investment house, he finally begins to notice her, especially since she excels at the job. The boss is about to fire him when he notices that the fellow has a way of charming women into doing whatever he wants. He decides this is a useful talent and assigns the ex-jock to sell bad bonds to susceptible women. The crooked boss then plans to have the fellow take the fall when the con-game is exposed. Fortunately, the jock's female colleague intervenes and the fellow is able to reimburse the women he cheated. He then gets revenge by selling the bonds to the boss's wife. Songs include: "I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now," "Collegiate," "Doin' the Raccoon," "Fashionette," "Jack and Jill," "How Many Times," "Everything I Do I Do for You," and "If You Could Care." ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The "original" Harrison Ford and former Chaplin leading lady Georgia Hale are co-starred in Tiffany-Stahl's Woman Against the World. When a chorus girl is found murdered, girl reporter Carol Hill (Hale) takes it upon herself to solve the case. The police have arrested wealthy Schuyler Van Loan (Ford) and charged him with the murder, but Carol suspects that someone else was responsible. However, she can't prove it, and soon everyone in town -- including Van Loan's fiancee Bernice Claire (Gertrude Olmstead) -- has turned against the boy. As the date of Van Loan's execution approaches, Carol desperately tries to dredge up enough evidence to prove his innocence. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

George McManus' long-running domestic comic strip Bringing Up Father was brought to the screen by William Randolph Hearst's Cosmopolitan Pictures. Reportedly, Hearst had approached vaudeville's Three Keatons (Joe, Myra and young Buster) to star in this project back in 1916, but Joe Keaton hated films and turned the newspaper mogul down flat. This 1928 film stars J. Farrell McDonald and Polly Moran as nouveau riche Irish-Americans Jiggs and Maggie, with Gertrude Olmstead as their pretty daughter Ellen. Despite his wealth, Jiggs prefers keeping company with his old drinking buddies at the greasy-spoon emporium owned by Dinty Moore (Jules Cowles), but social-climbing Maggie has loftier ambitions, among them a wealthy marriage between Ellen and a hand-kissing Count (Andres de Segurola). With Jiggs' covert help, Ellen is able to spend her time with her true love Dennis (Grant Withers), leading to a wealth of farcical complications. The magnificent Marie Dressler is wasted in the comparatively minor role of Dinty Moore's wife Annie, a role created solely for the purpose of reteaming Dressler with her Callahans and the Murphys cohort Polly Moran. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Still another of the seemingly endless stream of "collegiate" pictures, The Cheer Leader starred athletic Ralph Graves as the title character (even though he doesn't lead all that many cheers). Not exactly the hero of the piece, campus football star Graves stirs the fires of jealousy between his two lifelong friends. This he does so that his pals will be disqualified from playing in the Big Game, allowing Graves to be the team's sole star player. But by film's end Graves has developed a conscience, confessing his duplicity to the coach and quitting the team. This courageous act wins Graves the love of heroine Gertrude Olmstead. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Blond Helen Foster, who was 22 at the time, played the title role in this moralistic silent drama about teenaged Cynthia Perry, who despite warnings from older sister Patricia (Gertrude Olmstead) falls madly in love with handsome scoundrel Howard de Hart (Gladden James). To save her sister, the demure Patricia risks her own reputation in the bounder's apartment but is saved in the nick of time from a fate worse than death by her sweetheart (Reginald Sheffield). A 1929 WAMPAS Baby Star, Helen Foster later starred in both silent and sound versions of the exploitation melodrama The Road to Ruin. She later became an extra. Co-star Gertrude Olmstead became the second wife of director Robert Z. Leonard and retired. Grandly released as an "Imperial Photoplay," Sweet Sixteen bore all the trademarks of bargain-basement company Trem Carr Productions. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Despite its posh MGM trappings, Becky is at heart a "B" picture, sacrificing pretentiousness in favor of good, solid entertainment values. Sally O'Neil stars as the title character, a pretty New York salesgirl who aspires to a stage career. She gets her chance when she's hired for a Broadway show, working her way up to the leading role and ending up an overnight "smash." One of the fringe benefits of Becky's new-found celebrity is her whirlwind romance with a wealthy playboy (Owen Moore). But her new beau ultimately rejects her, prompting Becky to be more careful in her romantic selections in the future. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Buttons was another mild entry in the ever-fading career of juvenile star Jackie Coogan. This is the story of a London slum boy who manages to land a job as a page on a luxury ocean liner. Performing above and beyond the call of duty, "Buttons" prevents leading lady Gertrude Olmstead from entering into a disastrous marriage with fortune-hunting Roy D'Arcy. Inevitably, the ship hits an iceberg, but while the passengers and the rest of the crew head for the lifeboats, "Buttons" loyally returns -- to go down with the ship with his best friend, the captain; fortunately, both are saved just before they sink beneath the waves. After completing Buttons, 13-year-old Jackie Coogan temporarily retired from films to enter military school; he would not be seen on screen again until 1930's Tom Sawyer. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Previously filmed in England in 1919, the barnstorming Harry Maurice Vernon-Harold Owen play Mr.Wu re-emerged as a Lon Chaney Sr. vehicle in 1927. Chaney essays a dual role, as the titular Wu and Wu's honorable grandfather. After a lengthy prologue, it is established that Wu is a powerful, ruthless Chinese aristocrat who will stop at nothing to defend his daughter Nang Ping's (Renee Adoree) honor. When Nang Ping is seduced and abandoned by wealthy Briton Basil Gregory (Ralph Forbes), Wu begins plotting a horrible revenge, beginning with the killing of his own daughter (who goes to her fate with stoic resignation). He then captures Gregory's mother (Louise Dresser) and sister (Gertrude Olmstead), then forces Basil to watch as he prepares to subject the two women to unspeakable tortures. Wu is ultimately killed by Basil's mother, bringing this bizarre exercise in chinoiserie to a grim conclusion. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Vincent Blasco-Ibanez novel Entre Naranjos served as the inspiration for Greta Garbo's first American film, The Torrent. Garbo plays Leonora, a full-bodied Spanish peasant girl who falls in love with her landlord's son Don Rafael Bull (Ricardo Cortez). To prevent his son from marrying beneath his station, Don Rafael's father banishes Leonora from his property. She relocates in Paris, where she achieves fame and fortune as an opera singer, while back at home Don Rafael becomes a prominent politician. When Leonora returns home, she spurns his offers of marriage, even during a raging flood in which her life is in Don Rafael's hands. After this spectacular sequence, the film's surprisingly unhappy ending seems anticlimactic. Garbo's lover-mentor Mauritz Stiller had originally been slated to direct The Torrent, but at the last minute MGM opted for house director Monta Bell. Whether or not Stiller could have compensated for the script's more ludicrous passages is open to conjecture: Suffice to say that, without Garbo's presence, The Torrent would have been just so much Spanish applesauce. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Milton Sills stars as Nicki, a popular puppeteer who returns from the battlefields of WWI deaf as a post. He soon discovers that his sweetheart Angela (Gertrude Olmstead) has become engaged to his former wardrobe master Bruno (Francis McDonald). Before the story can metamorphose into a modern-day Pagliacci, a backstage fire breaks out at Nicki's puppet theater. Bruno behaves like a craven coward during the conflagration, but Nicki valiantly saves everyone from a horrible death. As a result, Angela vows eternal devotion to Nicki -- whose hearing has been restored in all the excitement. John F. Goodrich adapted the screenplay from a theatrical piece by Frances Lightner. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

It's hard to tell at times whether director Roland West was aiming for laughs or thrills in The Monster, but this ambivalence is all part of the fun. Hallam Cooley and Johnny Arthur, two dumb clerks in Gertrude Olmstead's small-town general store, try to impress Olmstead by joining the sheriff's investigation of a rash of disappearances. The two heroes and heroine discover that a local lunatic asylum has been taken over by mad scientist Lon Chaney, who lures victims into his lair by arranging automobile accidents (it's the old mirror-on-the-highway trick again). Chaney straps poor Olmstead to the operating table, preparing to transform her "immortal soul" to the body of one of his monstrous creations, but Coolley and Arthur come to her rescue. The Monster was based on a play by Crane Wilbur, with a dash of Poe's "Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether" tossed in. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Silent screen idol Rudolph Valentino made his next-to-last screen appearance in this romantic comedy/drama. Count Rodrigo Torriani (Valentino) is a notorious ladies' man who has become the subject of a long list of breach-of-promise suits filed by disappointed former girlfriends, which has left him destitute. Needing to learn a new trade, Rodrigo comes to the U.S., where his knowledge of Italian artifacts is put to good use by Jack Dorning (Casson Ferguson), an antique dealer. While Rodrigo's new trade would presumably put him back on the straight and narrow, such is not the case, as he finds himself the object of two different women's affections -- Mary (Gertrude Olmstead), Jack's secretary, and Elise (Nita Naldi), a wealthy socialite. Cobra reunited Valentino with Nita Naldi, who had starred with him in Blood and Sand and A Sainted Devil; within a year of Cobra's release, Valentino would die unexpectedly, and within three years, Naldi would retire from the screen. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide