
John G. Adolfi
Directing
Biography
Entering films as an actor in 1910, John G. Adolfi soon switched careers and became a director. He turned out numerous, mostly low-budget films for minor companies, but every so often got a chance to work at a big studio like Fox.
Known For

Young Herbert Thompson, wanting to attain wealth and social status, marries Ann Morton, who comes from a rich and prominent family, throwing over pretty young Angelina Kilboure, who really loves him. Years later Herbert has become the local District Attorney and has two children, Bert and Virginia. One night Bert, a patron at a seedy roadhouse, defends his sister's honor from a ruffian and winds up killing the man. Angelina persuades Herbert to leave his post as D.A. to defend his son in his murder trial. Herbert wins the case, but it turns out to have unexpected consequences.
Chalk Marks

Romance on a college campus.
College Lovers

A judge's daughter spurns his wealthy lifestyle and goes to do social work in poorer neighborhoods. There she meets a boxer contending for a championship.
Big Pal

Unbeknownst to each other, Charles Macklin and his widowed father Arthur are having an affair with an exotic dancer called The Sphinx. When both come to see her at the same time, Charles gets upset, denounces the Sphinx, and is knocked out by Arthur. Arthur then decides to marry the Sphinx, while Charles then resumes his affair with Frances, to whom he was engaged before he met the Sphinx.
The Sphinx

Now hear this. The studio that gave the cinema its voice offered 1929 audiences a chance to see and hear multiple silent-screen favorites for the first time in a gaudy, grandiose music-comedy-novelty revue that also included Talkie stars, Broadway luminaries and of course, Rin-Tin-Tin. Frank Fay hosts a jamboree that, among its 70+ stars, features bicyclers, boxing champ Georges Carpentier, chorines in terpsichore kickery, sister acts, Myrna Loy in two-strip Technicolor as an exotic Far East beauty, John Barrymore in a Shakespearean soliloquy (adding an on-screen voice to his legendary profile for the first time) and Winnie Lightner famously warbling the joys of Singing in the Bathtub. Watch, rinse, repeat!
The Show of Shows

A millionaire automaker retires upon the advice of his doctor, but becomes so bored he buys half interest in a gas station and works it on the sly.
The Millionaire

Two destitute New Yorkers meet cute in Central Park and then separate and independently get tangled up with some gangsters only to be reunited again in the end.
Central Park

Lord Cyril Wimborne, a barrister, divorces his wife, Myra, and takes custody of their child, Kenyon, when he finds her name linked with the profligate Major Pollock. Myra goes into seclusion while Pollock, intending to conceal Myra's innocence, goes to Burma. A few years later Myra sees Kenyon in the park with Mrs. Debenham, a widow with designs on Wimborne. Noting the resemblance between the lady in the park (whom he calls his "princess") and a photograph of his mother, Kenyon invites Myra to dinner at a time when his father, who has curtailed the visits to the park, plans to be away. At the same time Harold Courtenay, an old family friend, sees an opportunity to reunite the estranged couple.
Evidence

The story of Jewish financier Stephen Field and his daughter Esther. Having survived a European massacre years before that claimed his wife and son, Stephen takes immense pleasure in philanthropic work at a community service center in the U.S. while Esther entertains returning soldiers in a canteen. At the canteen, Esther meets Robert Graham, who because of a war wound suffers from fainting spells, and he falls in love with her. William Morris, a brilliant Jewish surgeon also courts Esther; and the men vie for her affection. When Graham loses control of his car due to a fainting spell suffering grave injury, Morris is the only person who can save his life.
Who's Your Brother?

Famous actress Norma Shearer's jewels are stolen… (Star-packed promotional short film intended to raise funds for the National Variety Artists Tuberculosis Sanatorium.)
The Stolen Jools

May Banks (May McAvoy) is a working-class girl who gets ideas above her station in life when her father, Colonel Banks (Aleck B. Francis), a Coney Island employee, save enough money to send her to an expensive, snobby all-girl finishing school.
The Little Snob

Cardelanche, the son of an Indian chief, returns from the East to find himself rejected by his own people. He is made captain of the U.S. army when he saves a detachment of cavalry from a group of renegade Indians, and further removes himself from his race when he develops a relationship with Miriam, the daughter of the Fort Remmington commandant. Lieutenant Parkman (Walker) gets into a fight with Cardelanche when Parkman is demoted, while General Custer's troops are slaughtered by Cardelanche's people. Cardelanche decides that his true allegiance is to his own race, and gives up Miriam to return to them.
The Scarlet West

Ma Delano runs a penny arcade in Coney Island, living upstairs with her sons and daughter. Story involves rum-running, accidental murder and a frame-up.
Sinners' Holiday

William Bradberry, an absent-minded Egyptologist, turns from a henpecked husband to a dominating one who, unknown to his daughter Betty and wife, writes theatre musical comedy on the side. And saves his daughter from the unsavory millionaire, Victor Smith she almost marries before she marries the decent man Tommy Dawson. A lost film.
What Happened To Father

A musical parody on prison reform in which a prison warden gives his cellblocks the look of a summer resort in order to stave off reformers.
What a Life

Henry Wilton is an elderly millionaire saddled with his selfish young second wife Emmy 'Sweetie' Wilton and a pair of spoiled grown children, Peggy and Eddie. To test his family's mettle, Henry pretends to have gone broke. Just as he suspected they would, his children rally to their father's side and change their ways: Peggy forsakes the fortune hunter George Struthers for the nice young man she's really in love with, the polo coach Larry Rivers, while Eddie applies for a demanding job and performs admirably. Only Sweetie seems to desert Henry.
A Successful Calamity

In order to support her sister and her sister's small child, Mary Tracy leads a double life: by day, she works as a schoolteacher; nights, she dances in a cabaret show. Mary becomes interested in Bill Adams, whose mother is prominent in an anti-vice crusade, and therefore attempts to quit her job in the cabaret. Al Morton, the club's owner, holds her to her contract, however, and Mary is caught up in a police raid on the cabaret. The club is shut down, and Mary is fired from her teaching post. Morton threatens to expose Bill (who is running a crime syndicate with money embezzled from his father's bank), and Bill sets out to take Morton for a ride. Finally realizing that she has fallen in love with Morton, Mary calls the cops and saves him from certain death. Bill is arrested, and Mary and Morton decide to get married.
Sinners' Parade

A successful shoe manufacturer named John Reeves goes on vacation and meets the grown children of his recently deceased and much-respected competitor; they're on the verge of losing the family legacy through their careless behavior. Reeves takes it upon himself to save his rival's company by teaching the heirs a lesson in business.
The Working Man

Writer and philosopher Voltaire, loyal to his king, Louis XV of France, nonetheless writes scathingly of the king's disdain for the rights and needs of his people. Louis admires Voltaire, but is increasingly influenced against him by his minister, the Count de Sarnac.
Voltaire

While giving a private performance for a visiting monarch, concert pianist Montgomery Royle is deafened when a bomb is detonated in an attempt to assassinate the foreign ruler. With his career over as a result of his injury, Royle returns to New York City with his sister Florence, close friend Mildred Miller, and considerably younger fiancée Grace Blair. After abandoning thoughts of suicide, Montgomery discovers he can lip read, and he spends his days observing people in Central Park from his apartment window. As he learns of people's problems, he tries to help them anonymously and becomes absorbed in his game of "playing God".