Acting
Feature-length compilation of 1920s newsreel footage, with commentary about news, sports, lifestyles, and historical figures.
Middle-aged Glasgow grocer Dickson McCunn ventures into the Scottish countryside in search of adventure, and finds a Russian princess imprisoned in a castle. Aided by a gang of Gorbals Die-Hards and a young Englishman, he rescues her from her captors and proves a hero, in spite of his qualms.
'Scots star sings songs in music hall setting.' (British Film Catalogue)
A British musical film directed by George Pearson
Itinerant Scot performers: One daughter of a veteran trouper weds a ne'er do well and dies in childbirth.Her spendthrift man goes but later returns to bleed the old man out of remaining savings.Another daughter makes good as a singer.
Filmed at the Chaplin Studios, Los Angeles on January 22, 1917 -- this footage was intended as a promotional film to help raise funds for the "British War Loan Bond Appeal Drive" (in addition, Lauder established the Harry Lauder Million Pound Fund for wounded soldiers and sailors in September 1917). The film was never completed or released at the time.
This British short, distributed in the United States by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, runs ten minutes (which is longer than the incorrect and absurd 3-minutes running time currently attached to it on site)is basically a filmed stage show of the popular Scottish singer Harry Lauder, appearing in a theater filled with Lauder fans,doing his comic act and monologue and singing, including the title song. He does "The End of the Road" as an encore.
