
Betty Compson
Acting
Biography
Betty Compson (March 19, 1897 – April 18, 1974) was an American actress and film producer. Most famous in silent films and early talkies, she is best known in her performances in The Docks of New York and The Barker, the latter earning a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Known For

Happily married for three years, Ann and David Smith live in New York. One morning Ann asks David if he had to do it over again, would he marry her? To her shock, he answers, "No". Later that day, they separately discover that, due to a legal complication, they are not legally married.
Mr. & Mrs. Smith

Period music, film clips and newsreel footage combined into a visual exploration of the American entertainment industry during the Great Depression.
Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

With a full Hollywood background and settings but more an expose of scandal-and-gossip magazines of the era, has-been actor John Blakeford agrees to write his memoirs for magazine-publisher Jordan Winston. When Blakeford's daughter, Patricia, ask him to desist for the sake of his ex-wife, Carlotta Blakeford, he attempts to break his contract with Winston.
Hollywood Boulevard

Former bootlegger Remy Marco has a slight problem with foreclosing bankers, a prospective son-in-law, and four hard-to-explain corpses.
A Slight Case of Murder

Convicts escaping from Devil's Island come under the influence of a strange Christ-like figure.
Strange Cargo

A blue-collar worker on New York's depressed waterfront finds his life changed after he saves a woman attempting suicide.
The Docks of New York

A group of people are stuck on a schooner in the middle of the Pacific with no wind.
Destination Unknown

While on their honeymoon, a reporter and his new bride stumble upon a ring of fifth columnists.
Roar of the Press

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

Among the pieces featured in Fragments are the final reel of John Ford's The Village Blacksmith (1922) and a glimpse at Emil Jannings in The Way of All Flesh (1927), the only Oscar®-winning performance in a lost film. Fragments also features clips from such lost films as Cleopatra (1917), starring Theda Bara; The Miracle Man (1919), with Lon Chaney; He Comes Up Smiling (1918), starring Douglas Fairbanks; an early lost sound film, Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929), filmed in early Technicolor, and the only color footage of silent star Clara Bow, Red Hair (1928). The program is rounded out with interviews of film preservationists involved in identifying and restoring these films. Also featured is a new interview with Diana Serra Cary, best known as "Baby Peggy", one of the major American child stars of the silent era, who discusses one of the featured fragments, Darling of New York (1923).
Fragments: Surviving Pieces of Lost Films

Roberta Morgan is being raised in a wealthy home where her mother is occupied with her society-club activities and her father is immersed in his business activities. She also feels that the household staff is against her and that no one understands her needs and problems. Things spiral out of control.
The Beloved Brat

It is the fate of a small frontier town, adjoining the no-man's-land where the Russians and Austrians are fighting out one of the final campaigns of World War I, to be occupied one day by the Russians, the next by the Austrians, and the inhabitants soon acquire a complacent view of the changing allegiances. To the town comes Ann Warschaska, intent on avenging the suicide of her sister, who has killed herself after being betrayed by an Austrian officer. She knows no more about his identity than the number of his room at the "Hotel Imperial".
Hotel Imperial

Angela comes to Hollywood with only two things: Her dream to become a movie star, and Grandpa. She leaves an Aunt, a brother, Grandma, and her longtime boyfriend back in Centerville. Despite seeing major movie stars around every corner, and knocking on every casting office door in town, at the end of her first day she is still unemployed. To her horror, when she arrives back at their hotel, she finds that Grandpa has been cast in a movie by William DeMille and quickly becomes a star during the ensuing weeks. Her family, worried that Angela and Grandpa are getting into trouble, come to Hollywood to drag them back home. In short order Aunt, Grandma, brother, boyfriend and even the parrot become superstars, but Angela is still unemployed...
Hollywood

The town's leading citizen becomes a homicidal maniac after his wife deserts him.
Invisible Ghost

For the ventriloquist Gabbo his wooden dummy Otto is the only means of expression. When he starts relying more and more on Otto, he starts going mad.
The Great Gabbo

A dancehall girl meets a sailor and they fall in love, but the club’s owner doesn’t want the girl to leave.
Cafe Hostess

Cowboys from Texas is a 1939 American Western "Three Mesquiteers" B-movie directed by George Sherman.Texas has opened up land for homesteaders. Clay Allison wants their land and has his men led by Plummer try to start a range war between them and the ranchers. With each side suspecting the other of their problems, the Mesquiteers realize someone else is responsible. Stony suspects Plummer and fakes leaving the Mesquiteers to join Plummer's gang hoping to find out who it is.
Cowboys from Texas

Ranch owner John Hardy becomes the dupe of Cleo Dade when he marries her and brings her home to be a mother to his daughter Rose.
Border Raiders

A fog-shrouded house provides the setting for a weekend party prank gone wrong and the resulting murder being blamed on an innocent man.
Midnight Mystery

On a voyage to Nome, Roy Glenister, one of the several owners of a rich mine, The Midas, is captivated by Helen Chester, while he both fascinates and disquiets her by his primitive nature. He arrives to find his partners, Slapjack Simms and Joe Dextry, befuddled by a trio of no-gooders: Voorhees, the U. S. marshal, Judge Stillman, and McNamara, a politician. Their racket is to cloud title to the various mine claims, eject the miners, and make McNamara owner of the disputed properties.