(Marion Davies has stars in her eyes in this "delightful l...)
Marion Davies has stars in her eyes in this "delightful look at silent Hollywood" (Time Out Film Guide), directed by King Vidor and costarring William Haines. All Peggy Pepper (Davies) wants in life is to be a great dramatic actress. But when rowdy slapstick comic Billy Boyle (Haines) gives Peggy her big break, she puts her dreams on hold and becomes America's comedy queen. So when prestigious High Arts Studio offers her the chance to play serious roles and Peggy gets an awfully swelled head, it's up to Billy to burst her bubble and bring Peggy down to earth. Loosely based on Gloria Swanson's career, Show People features cameos by Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, John Gilbert, William S. Hart and more in this "bright and snappy ode to Hollywood stardom" (Allrovi.com).
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(Cowboy-turned-railroader Dan Kurrie (William S. Hart) arr...)
Cowboy-turned-railroader Dan Kurrie (William S. Hart) arrives in the town of Condor to take over the railroad station there and is reunited with Margaret Young, whom he secretly loves. Soon though he crosses railroad stockholder Joseph Garber, who has his own designs on Margaret's affection. 62 Minutes
(Gambler and gunslinger Oak Miller (William S. Hart) is se...)
Gambler and gunslinger Oak Miller (William S. Hart) is set on revenge against the dapper villain Mark Granger, who abused his sister Rose. But after Granger disappears, Oak must tend his ailing sister with the help of Barbara, who he secretly loves. However Oak is unaware that Granger has returned to town disguised and is planning more trouble nor that his dear Barbara is living in fear of her cruel step-father. 75 Minutes
(Former crook 'Square' Kelly (William S. Hart) serves in t...)
Former crook 'Square' Kelly (William S. Hart) serves in the First World War. When he returns from the war, one of his comrades-in-arms convinces him to join the police force. But Kelly finds himself confronting the very criminals who made up his old gang.
(Cowboy legend William S. Hart steps out of the Wild West ...)
Cowboy legend William S. Hart steps out of the Wild West to star in this shocking exposé of labor conditions in the 1920s. Every morning, Robert Evans and his young son, Danny, go to work at the plant owned by wealthy mogul Henry Chapple. The millionaire cares little for the employees, and does nothing to fix the faulty machinery in his shop. Tragically, Danny is killed when he becomes caught in a malfunctioning conveyor belt. Seeking payback, his grieving father kidnaps Chapple's newborn baby, Georgie, and raises him as his own in secret. But when the former swindler becomes a changed man, Robert feels he must give up his dreams of vengeance...and the son he has come to love as much as the one he lost. With more light-hearted cowboys like Tom Mix and Hoot Gibson gaining in popularity as the Roaring Twenties began, the heavy-handed morality plays of William S. Hart seemed increasingly outdated. The Whistle was Paramount's attempt to launch Hart as a serious actor not just limited to Westerns. At the time, labor unrest was capturing the headlines as more and more unions were born in the wake of World War I, making it a timely topic for Hollywood. The Whistle opened to stupendous reviews, but audiences were unable to accept Hart as anything other than a hero of the Old West. Returning to the genre in which he was most comfortable, he would make only six more films before retiring in 1925. Lambert Hillyer, who had worked with the actor before on The Narrow Trail (1917), stylishly directs his own screenplay. During the sound era, he would make the Universal horror pictures Dracula's Daughter and The Invisible Ray (both 1936), as well as the first big-screen adaptation of Batman (1943). BONUS: The Taking Of Luke McVane (Silent, BW, 1915): William S. Hart is Luke McVane, an irrepressible outlaw in town for a high-stakes card game. After shooting his opponent for cheating, he finds himself on the run from a bloodthirsty lynch mob. It'll take the love of a good woman to make McVane see the light. Hart's leading lady is Enid Markey, best known for being the first actress to play Jane Porter in the original Tarzan of the Apes and The Romance of Tarzan (both 1918). Directed by William S. Hart.
Lost Treasures of the West: Three Word Brand (1921) / Square Deal Man (1917) (Silent)
(Three Word Brand (1921, B&W, Silent): Hard-working ranche...)
Three Word Brand (1921, B&W, Silent): Hard-working rancher Bill Brand is a man of action and few words. Greedy neighbor Bull Yeates has bribed a group of senators to pass a bill that will grant him exclusive water rights to the valley which will drive Brand and half the cattlemen in the county out of business. Discovering that he is a dead-ringer for the governor, Brand travels to the state capital on a desperate mission. He will impersonate the governor and defeat the crooked legislation once and for all, or wind up in prison if he is caught. Square Deal Man (1917, B&W, Silent): Gambler Jack O'Diamonds wins Colonel Ransome's ranch in a poker game. The loser accuses Jack of cheating. The lights go out as shots are fired and when they go back on, the Colonel lies dead. Believing that he was the killer and wracked with guilt, Jack sends East for Ransome's daughter, Virginia, and gives her the deed. He falls in love with the beautiful girl, and stays on as foreman. When hired hand Pedro accuses him of murdering the Colonel, Virginia orders Jack to leave. With Jack out of the way, Pedro and his gang conspire to steal Virginia's entire herd.
William Surrey Hart was an American silent film actor, screenwriter, director and producer. He appeared in numerous western films, and consequently became the star of the silent era who imbued all of his characters with honor and integrity.
Background
William Surrey Hart was born on December 6, 1864 in Newburgh, New York, United States. He was the second son and second of eight children of British parents, Nicolas Hart and Rose (McCauley) Hart. His father had emigrated from Liverpool; his mother, born in northern Ireland, had grown up in Newburgh.
Nicolas Hart, a miller who specialized in locating sites for grain mills and supervising their construction, headed west with his family soon after William's birth; never staying long in one place, he moved from town to town across the plains states, from Illinois to the Dakotas. Illness twice took William's mother back to Newburgh for protracted periods, but William spent much time with his father in the W. He lived alongside the Sioux in Minnesota and the Dakotas, learning their language, and in the frontier towns of Kansas during the days of the cattle drives. In his later life and work he tried to re-create the authentic flavor of experience in what he called "the unbroken W. "
Hart's father returned to the East in the middle 1870s, and the reunited family moved to West Farms in the suburbs of New York and then into the city.
Education
Hart had his only formal schooling at West Farms, attending public school after a brief interval at a private school in Morrisania.
On a second trip to England he began to study acting, and he continued his training on his return to New York.
Career
Hart worked as a messenger boy for hotels, as a drugstore cashier, and for a longer period as a postal clerk. He was drawn to athletic events and showed considerable skill at distance running and walking races, becoming a member of the Manhattan Athletic Club's track team. After working his way to England, he won several international races there.
As a young man in New York, Hart developed an ambition to become an actor. In the fall of 1888 he found a place in a touring company headed by Daniel E. Bandmann. By coincidence, he made his stage debut in Newburgh; the company opened in New York City in January. Thus began a phase of Hart's career that was to last a quarter-century, until 1914.
Becoming a journeyman actor in the last years of the American theater before competition from the movies, he barnstormed from coast to coast, rehearsed without pay, bought his own wardrobe, and played one-night stands of melodrama and Shakespeare. In 1897 he made his first tour with star billing in The Man in the Iron Mask, and two years later he played Messala in the New York production of Ben Hur, in which he drove a chariot across the stage.
Hart's acting fortunes took a downward turn in 1903 and 1904, and he was forced to support himself by working for a private detective agency. But the following year he was engaged to play Cash Hawkins in Edwin Milton Royle's Western melodrama The Squaw Man, and thereafter he united his passion for the West with his career. He became the quintessential cowboy of the American stage, playing Broadway and touring in such Westerns as The Virginian, The Barrier (1910), and The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1912). "While playing in Cleveland, " Hart wrote in his autobiography, "I attended a picture show. I saw a Western picture. It was awful!" So Hart describes the moment he determined to leave the stage and enter motion picture work. He saw at once, so he recalled, that his skills as an actor and his knowledge of the West gave him the perfect qualifications for success in Western movies.
On a theatrical tour in California he learned that an old friend, Thomas H. Ince, was in charge of production for the New York Motion Picture Company in Santa Monica. Though Ince was not particularly encouraging, Hart persevered, and began movie work in the summer of 1914. After playing villains in two short films, he starred that year in a five-reel feature, The Bargain, which made an immediate hit with audiences.
In his early fifties, though disguising his age by as much as fifteen years, Hart became a famous cowboy star in a screen career that was to last a dozen years. His success was built on several attributes of his work as actor and as director of his own Westerns - the authenticity of costumes, settings, and techniques; the quality of his acting, a fusion of intensity and restraint that gave him a commanding presence on the screen; and, perhaps most important, the popular formula he followed in his movie stories of realistic action combined with sentimental morality. His own characterizations were at the heart of this skillful combination. Typically he played a "good badman, " an outlaw or outsider whose instincts are good despite his record or reputation, and who invariably performs a brave and honest act to ensure a happy ending.
In the early 1920s, however, the formula began to lose its appeal, in part because of changing audience tastes, in part because Hart's effort to play heroes half his age became more and more an anomaly. As with D. W. Griffith and other early filmmakers, Hart's creative work was frequently complicated and sometimes undermined by complex financial dealings. Ince took advantage of Hart's ignorance by signing him to a contract in 1914 at $125 a week when comparable actors at the same studio were earning $2, 000 and more weekly.
In 1915, along with Ince, Hart moved to Triangle Pictures, and two years later he shifted again to Adolph Zukor's Artcraft Productions. In the 1920s he formed his own company, William S. Hart Productions, and signed with Zukor's Famous Players for distribution. But Zukor soon demanded he make films under studio supervision because of the declining box office appeal of his independent films, and Hart severed relations. He made his last film, Tumbleweeds, in 1925, capping his career with a spectacular sequence depicting the Oklahoma land rush. But despite good reviews and large audiences for its New York opening, the distributor, United Artists, took little interest in the film, and Hart lost money on it.
Hart nevertheless became wealthy from his movie work. He owned a large estate in West Hollywood and an eight-acre ranch in Newhall, north of Los Angeles, which he stocked with cattle and filled with authentic Western artifacts and memorabilia. At his death he willed his Hollywood estate to Los Angeles for use as a park and his ranch to Los Angeles County as a public park and museum. Hollywood legend has it that Hart fell in love with and proposed to many of his leading ladies.
Hart died in California Lutheran Hospital, Los Angeles, of acute pyelonephritis. After Episcopal funeral services he was buried in Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York. He left most of his estate for public and private charitable purposes.
Throughout his life Hart was a member of the Episcopal Church.
Views
Quotations:
"My ranch William S. Hart Park is for the benefit of the American Public of every race and creed. "
Personality
As a young man Hart was over six feet tall, lean and rugged-looking, with the high cheekbones and stark features that were to become more prominent with age and even then seemed to justify his self-image as a "white Indian boy. "
Connections
Hart's marriage to Winifred Westover lasted only briefly. They married on December 7, 1921, and separated on May 10, 1922; Mrs. Hart obtained a divorce on February 11, 1927, on grounds of desertion. They had one child, William S. Hart, Jr. For most of his adult life Hart lived with his sister Mary, who died in 1943.