Mary Alden Movies

Wilfred Lucas plays a distinguished banker, falsely accused of murder. Though acquitted in court, Lucas' reputation is destroyed, and he force from his job. Like George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life, Lucas decides that he's worth more dead than alive; thus, he plans to kill himself so his family can collect his life insurance. Also like George Bailey, he is saved from this fate at the very last minute. With only one reel left, everyone puts in overtime to rush through a happy ending. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This first movie version of Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt stars the corpulent Willard Louis in the title role. A middle-aged businessman/blowhard in the small town of Zenith, Babbitt is somewhat naïve in the ways of the world. He allows himself to stray from his long-standing marriage to wife Myra (Mary Alden) when he succumbs to the charms of avaricious Tanis Judique (Carmel Myers). Before he comes to his senses, Babbitt nearly ruins the reputation he has spent a lifetime judiciously building up. Warner Bros. remade Babbitt in 1934, with Guy Kibbee typecast to perfection in the leading role. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Neither director Henry King nor star Richard Barthelmess could do much with the cliched situations of this dark melodrama. Joe Newbolt (Barthelmess) goes to work for farmer Isom Chase (Charles Hill Mailes) to save his mother (Mary Alden) from the poorhouse. Chase is a cruel taskmaster and he also abuses his wife Ollie (Mary Thurman). To escape her situation, Ollie has an affair with a traveling salesman and makes plans to elope with him. Because of his religious convictions, Joe tries to talk her out of her plan. Chase catches them together and thinks that the two are plotting against him. He grabs his gun, but accidentally shoots himself. To save Ollie's name, Joe keeps quiet and he is arrested for Chase's murder. He is convicted and sentenced to hang, but escapes. Ollie finally tells the truth, and Joe is cleared of any wrongdoing. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

While the mid-1920s were deluged with films about college life, and Brown of Harvard is probably the ultimate silent film in this genre, even more significantly it is an early example of the buddy film. Never mind the romance between Harvard undergrad Tom Brown (William Haines) and professor's daughter, Mary Abbott (Mary Brian) -- the real love story, and the one that truly moves the film's plot, is the one between the handsome, athletic Brown and his weakling sidekick Jim Doolittle (Jack Pickford) (in fact, the physical contrast between the two men is echoed in another important buddy film which came out some 40 years later -- Midnight Cowboy). The relationship between the two young men is established right from the beginning, when the brash and cocky Brown easily wins over his dormitory mates but refuses to let them ostracize Doolittle. Doolittle becomes Brown's biggest champion and their mutual loyalty is much more straightforward than Brown's pursuit of Mary, who can't decide whether she hates him, loves him, or prefers his stuffy rival, Bob MacAndrews (Francis X. Bushman, Jr.). Doolittle sticks by his pal when he loses the rowing competition against Yale, and later on risks his life by chasing after Brown in a pouring rainstorm to tell him that he hasn't been scratched from the football team after all. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

The Earth Woman was one of several films produced by Mrs. Wallace Reid (Dorothy Davenport), who after the drug-induced death of her movie-idol husband dedicated herself to saving impressionable filmgoers from the evils and pitfalls of modern life. The story is set in the hills of Tennessee, where practically everybody gets smashed on rotgut moonshine. A drink-benumbed hillbilly tries to rape heroine Sally Tilden (Priscilla Bonner), setting off a chain reaction of violence, murder, and false confessions. Through it all, "earth mother" Martha Tilden (Mary Alden) tries to hold her very dysfunctional brood together. Perhaps it was the notoriety of the still seething Hatfield-McCoy feud that prompted so many filmmakers to turn out "backwoods" dramas like this one. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Erstwhile Susan was based on Helen R. Martin's novel Barnabetta, which previously had served as the basis for a play by Marian De Forest. Constance Binney plays the daughter of a strict Pennsylvania Dutch household. She is rescued from this atmosphere by her stepmother, who provides the girl with enough money to attend school out of state and start a new life. The film has been noted as a sociological curiosity, painting a bleak picture of Pennsylvania Dutch paternalism and offering a rare nice stepmother. Most of the villainy is in the capable hands of Anders Randolph, who during his long screen career menaced everyone from Douglas Fairbanks to Garbo to Laurel & Hardy. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

When John Briggs (Harrison Ford) returns from the Great War (later known as World War I), he tries his hand at writing, but his stories don't sell. Then his mother falls ill so he becomes desperate and uses material from a diary he found on a dead Russian soldier. He claims to be the man, Alexis Triona, and the book becomes a huge success. Under the identity of Triona, Briggs meets and marries Olivia Gale (Enid Bennett). Ultimately he comes to realize that he can't keep the truth from his wife forever, so he writes her a confession and leaves. He is beaten by thugs and hospitalized, and during his recovery he tries to reconcile with his wife. Olivia snubs him, so he drives his car off a cliff. She rushes to his side and forgives him. He writes a novel under his own name which becomes just as successful as his first book. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

In this romance, an early talkie containing approximately 4 minutes of dialog and a song, a man is paroled from prison provided he adheres strictly to "Rule No. 3," which states that he cannot get romantically involved, nor marry until he is off parole. He encounters trouble when he saves a doe-eyed girl from drowning and falls instantly in love. Fortunately, his parole officer is sensitive and the office grants the parolee special dispensation to wed. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Has the World Gone Mad? answers its own question by detailing the sinful excesses of the "Jazz Age." Future gossip columnist Hedda Hopper stars as Mrs. Adams, a sedate housewife who decides to kick up her heels and sample the wilder side of life. Walking out on her husband (Robert Adams), Mrs. Adams moves to the Big City, where she enters into an affair with Mr. Bell (Charles Richman), the father of her son's (Vincent Coleman) girlfriend (Elinor Fair). After 7 reels of gay abandon, Mrs. Adams comes to her senses and returns to her faithful hubby. By the end of the 1920s, films involving the peccadillos of middle-agers had given way to scenarios about "Flaming Youth," and Hedda Hopper had settled into character roles. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Veteran Biograph leading man/director Wilfred Lucas essays the title role in Hell-to-Pay Austin. A rough-and-tumble lumberman, Austin nonetheless has a sentimental side. When the minister father of winsome Briar Rose (Bessie Love) dies of excessive drinking, the girl is unofficially adopted by Austin and his fellow timber jockeys. Her influence transforms old "Hell-to-Pay" from a carouser-brawler to a pious Christian. And of course, once Briar Rose reaches marrying age, she takes Austin as a husband. If Hell-to-Pay Austin were available today, it might prove an eye-opener to film fans who remember Wilfred Lucas only as the stentorian prison warden in Laurel & Hardy's Pardon Us (1931). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

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