Thomas R. Mills

The original concept of the show was to allow the viewer to see the inner workings of a movie studio and featured interviews with MGM stars and explanations of how movies were made. Later, the format changed to show edited versions of MGM films.

An infatuated debutante renews a Shakespearean actor's running feud with his leading lady.

German Julius Reuter sends 19th-century news by carrier pigeon and then by wire, founding a news agency.

After the woman who raised him claims he's not her son, Richard searches for clues about his identity. Urged on by his mentor, Capt. Randolph Courtney, Richard focuses on Julia Trent Anders, a middle-aged actress who just might be his real mother. But soon, Richard begins to fall for Julia's stepdaughter. Amidst the upheaval, Richard schemes to return Julia to the stage -- but he's in for another big surprise.

Colonel Ferris, a wealthy farmer in northern California, is strongly opposed to hydraulic mining, a new method developed during the gold rush of the 1870's, which is flooding the area's prosperous farmlands. Despite Ferris' political stance, Jared Whitney, a mining engineer from the East, becomes friends with the colonel's son Lance and falls in love with his daughter Serena. Family tensions deepen when the colonel's brother Ralph gives up farming to go to San Francisco to work for his wife Rosanna's father, Harrison McCooey, a leader in the mining venture. When Lance follows Ralph, the colonel, focusing his anger on Jared, forbids him to see Serena.

Orphan Pip discovers through lawyer Mr. Jaggers that a mysterious benefactor wishes to ensure that he becomes a gentleman. Reunited with his childhood patron, Miss Havisham, and his first love, the beautiful but emotionally cold Estella, he discovers that the elderly spinster has gone mad from having been left at the altar as a young woman, and has made her charge into a warped, unfeeling heartbreaker.

This dramatized short film describes the historical mystery of France's "man in the iron mask". King Louis XIV imprisoned a man who was never identified, but who was forced to wear an iron mask for the length of his captivity, which ended only in his death. Several candidates for the identity of the man are investigated.

The one was a venturer - the other an adventurer - the one a man who wanted to see adventure, but who had never been beyond the city limits - the other a man who had seen adventure in all parts of the world, and who assured the venturer that things were just as monotonous every place in the world as in the city. So they met, each seeking for the unconventional, on a New York street, and dined together as men out of luck, with two cents between them - and still nothing happened. They both had credit at the hotel. Then into their lives came the feminine influence - a sweet girl who lived in a house which was irrevocably a household. The adventurer hesitated - he had yet to satisfy his longing for the incalculable. Suddenly love changed the venturer into an adventurer, and settled the adventurer into a venturer.

A prince, aiming to avoid an unwanted marriage, hires an American as a double to evade his pursuing father.

The second of the three film versions of the E. Phillips Oppenheim espionage thriller set largely in an old dark house where a tremulous wife wonders if her husband is really his double, a dastardly German spy.

When Alice Winton's brother embezzles funds belonging to his employer, Benjamin Graves, a promoter of worthless mining stock, she saves him from arrest by signing over to Graves a hefty promissory note. Later Graves deliberately wrecks the mining company in which Alice's invalid father has invested his money, and the shock from the resulting bankruptcy, kills him. Alice marries Robert Burton, a noted criminologist who believes in the theory, "once a thief, always a thief," and the couple takes up temporary residence with District Attorney Jeffrey Miller. In Miller's safe are incriminating documents concerning Graves's illegal activities, and Graves, knowing of their existence, blackmails Alice into stealing them by showing her some compromising love letters to which he has forged her name.

Paul Bonard an artist, loses his memory when he receives a blow on the head from one of two apaches fighting over Wildcat, a sultry stepper in a cafe. He becomes an apache himself, falls in love with Wildcat and paints her portrait--his masterpiece. Wildcat learns Paul's identity and restores him to his family, though realizing that she will lose him. Surgery restores Paul's memory, but some subconscious force guides him back to the cafe and Wildcat's love.

To spite her domineering father, Eastern girl Lucy Fox pursues an unsuitable suitor to a small Western hamlet where she obtains a job as a manicurist. A local rancher (Buck Jones), who has fallen for the girl, does his best to persuade her not too marry the bounder.

A British doctor and his son's Austrian governess have an affair and are accused of killing his wife.

Dr. Hugh Loring, whose hobby is heredity, has evolved the theory that physical or mental peculiarities of children reveal the parents. The doctor's intense desire for children is only equaled by his wife's aversion. On the occasion of the doctor admonishing his wife for being friendly with an admirer she leaves him, and when her child is born she swears Ruth Carden, an employee of her husband's, who has accompanied her, to secrecy, so that she may keep from the doctor his greatest joy. Mrs. Loring dies, and Ruth returns to the doctor's office, leaving the child in the care of the nurse. Three years later the nurse finds it necessary to give up the child, and the doctor, who has fallen in love with Ruth, is stunned, for he believes that the child is hers.

An exceptionally capable girl, Trixie Joyce, proves a great help, to her mother, a widow with a large family of girls. They receive a proposition from Henrietta Joyce, Mrs. Joyce's wealthy sister-in-law, to take Trixie as a companion, feed and clothe her and in place of wages, send her mother an allowance sufficient to support the rest of the family. Both realize it is the solution of a hard problem, and Trixie accepts the offer. Henrietta is close-fisted and selfish in money matters, but she also has a strain of morbidly-romantic sentiment in her nature, so the largest part of Trixie's work is reading aloud to her mistress quantities of swashbuckling, mid-Victorian novels.

In a small Nova Scotia, Canada, fishing village, Charity Byfleet marries William Pennland, a romantic soldier of fortune, just before he leaves on a long voyage. The irrepressible William, however, soon initiates a flirtation with the captain's wife and is thrown overboard. He swims to shore, landing on a rough and isolated stretch of the Nova Scotia coast, where he is found half-dead and nursed back to health by Hagar Levanti.

Aviator Richard March, is shot down over France, though not badly hurt in the crash, he steals a kiss from Marion Weston, the Red Cross nurse whose ambulance comes to his aid. After the war, Richard resumes his professional life as an actor and meets Marion by chance at a skating party. At first she snubs him, but he soon charms her, and they become constant companions. Marion later believes that Richard is having an affair with Suzette, his leading lady, and she again turns the cold shoulder toward him. Richard writes a play based on his own experiences, and Marion comes to see she misjudged him. Connie, who is jealous of Richard's love for Marion, attempts to compromise him. Connie herself later confesses her scheme to discredit Richard, and Richard and Marion are reunited.

Gerald Stanley (John Gilbert) is an English gentleman who is engaged to Beatrice Joyce (Alma Frances). But Stanley's personality changes whenever he drinks, and his brother (who also loves Beatrice) uses this to his advantage.

After Mary Allen drops a blood-stained knife, Judge Robert Craigin's dead body lies next to her. Mary secures a secretarial position with Judge Bruce Craigin, the dead man's younger brother. Professor Galt, a criminal psychologist, and Detective Hooker believe that Mary committed the crime. Craigin and Mary fall in love and are married. Galt persuades Craigin to let Mary furnish their new home because a clue to the solving of the murder is the artistic furnishings of the room in which the murder victim was found. The similarity between the decor of the house and the crime room convinces Craigin that Mary murdered his brother, but Thomas Gray confesses to the crime. He had been in the room waiting to avenge his wife's wrongs on Craigin. When Craigin attacked Mary, she lifted her paper-knife and fainted, and Gray killed Craigin, leaving the murder weapon in Mary's hand. Mary and Bruce find happiness together.