Acting
Vera Vivienne Spragg (December 10, 1896 – June 10, 1961) was an American stage and film actress known for her work in Broadway theatre and in silent and sound films.
A stuffy family man cheats on his wife but she refuses him a divorce at first. Meanwhile his mistress resents her second class status.
Ignored by his alcoholic parents, Jimmy Wilson starts hanging around with some shady characters. After falling in love with a lounge singer, Jimmy tries to impress her by doing jobs for her shady boss. After one of these jobs goes bad, Jimmy ends up on the run. Eventually, he must confront the truth, his past, and his parents. The judge cites parental neglect in the case of a teenager (John Miljan) charged with murder.
A simple Connecticut farm girl is recruited by a distant relative, an aristocratic patroon, to be governess to his young daughter in his Hudson Valley mansion.
A condemned murderer, in the process of being executed, relives the events that led to his being sentenced to die in the electric chair. Told in flashback, we witness a sleazy dancehall girl (Vivienne Osborne) dupe a high rise riveter (Edward G. Robinson) into marriage so she can live off of him. But when he loses his job and his marbles, she ends up supporting him with money from her side man--and misses no opportunity to rub it in his face that she's now supporting him in his emasculated state. As the animosity grows and things get more and more unbearable, he is eventually driven to desperate measures.
The Progressive Party convention is deadlocked for governor, so both sides nominate the dark horse Zachary Hicks. Kay Russell suggests they hire Hal Blake as campaign manager; but first they have to get him out of jail for not paying alimony. Blake organizes the office and coaches Hicks to answer every question by pausing and then saying, "Well yes, but then again no." Blake will sell Hicks as dumb but honest. Russell refuses to marry Blake, while Joe keeps people away from Blake's office. Blake teaches Hicks a speech by Lincoln. At the debate when the conservative candidate Underwood recites the same speech, Blake exposes him as a plagiarist. Hicks is presented for photo opportunities and gives his yes-and-no answer to any question, including whether he expects to win.
A foreword warns against the peril of yellow journalism, and the story illustrates it by following events in the upstate New York town of Cornwall after prominant financier George Ferguson is killed. Two types of New York City journalists descend on Cornwall, one interested in facts, the other in getting sensational "news". Mrs. Ferguson is known to have been friendly with a local banker. The Fergusons quarrel the evening he is killed (by "burglars", his wife tells the police later), and she is arrested, spurred on by the "bad" journalists, who also manage to badger the banker's wife into the hospital. Meanwhile, young Bruce Foster runs the Cornwall Courier, and shows the big city reporters how to dig out real news while they attempt to subvert justice for their own ends.
After her brother's death, Roma Courtney becomes the heiress to his fortune. When a fake psychic claims to have a message from her dead brother, he coaxes her into participating in a séance. While her fiancé first believes the séance is nothing more than a scam, he eventually realizes that the vengeful spirit of an executed murderer has possessed Roma's body.
A society girl tries to reform her playboy husband by making him jealous.
This drama offers a few slices from the lives of those who live, work, and travel upon a luxurious trans-atlantic ocean liner.
When her father dies, a young girl helps a young man take command of the ship to fight the British during the war of 1812.