Donald Crisp

  • Archie Mayo – Svengali (1931)

    1931-1940Archie MayoHorrorRomanceUSA

    Through hypnotism and telepathic mind control, a sinister music maestro controls the singing voice, but not the heart, of the woman he loves.Read More »

  • Anthony Mann – The Man from Laramie (1955)

    1951-1960Anthony MannClassicsUSAWestern

    Synopsis:
    Mysterious Will Lockhart delivers supplies to storekeeper Barbara Waggoman at Coronado, an isolated town in Apache country. Before long, he’s tangled with Dave Waggoman, vicious son of autocratic rancher Alec and cousin of sweet Barbara. But he sticks around town, his presence a catalyst for changes in people’s lives, searching for someone he doesn’t know…who’s been selling rifles to the Apaches.Read More »

  • Donald Crisp & Buster Keaton – The Navigator (1924)

    USA1921-1930Buster KeatonComedyDonald CrispSilent

    Wealthy Rollo Treadway (Buster Keaton) suddenly decides to propose to his neighbor across the street, Betsy O’Brien (Kathryn McGuire), and sends his servant to book passage for a honeymoon sea cruise to Honolulu. When Betsy rejects his sudden offer however, he decides to go on the trip anyway, boarding without delay that night. Because the pier number is partially covered, he ends up on the wrong ship, the Navigator, which Betsy’s rich father (Frederick Vroom) has just sold to a small country at war.Read More »

  • Irving Rapper – The Adventures of Mark Twain (1944)

    1941-1950AdventureDramaIrving RapperUSA

    Plot:
    He was a riverboat pilot, reporter, penniless prospector, Civil War dropout, would-be entrepreneur, loving family man, world traveler, pomposity burster and raconteur. It turns out the man who created adventures for Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and a Connecticut Yankee led a mighty adventurous life himself. “Truth is a very valuable thing,” says Fredric March’s Mark Twain. “I believe we should be economical with it.” And that sets the tone for what follows: a lovingly crafted Hollywoodized biopic tracing the immortal humorist’s life from Hannibal boyhood to Big River exploits to global literary lion and more. Riverboat’s a-comin’, hop aboard – with Tom, Huck, Jim and above all, Samuel Langhorne Clemens. From Warner Brothers!Read More »

  • Arthur Pierson – Home Town Story (1951)

    1951-1960Arthur PiersonDramaMarilyn MonroeUSA

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    AMG: Home Town Story was commissioned as a pro-Big Business tract by General Motors. The story revolves around Blake Washburn, a mildly leftist newspaperman, played by Jeffrey Lynn. Returning to his home town, Washburn turns his journalistic vitriol upon the local business interests. Only after his kid sister Katie (Melinda Plowman), trapped in a cave-in, is rescued by locally produced technology, does Washburn realize the value of the capitalistic system. Home Town Story was fitfully distributed by MGM, then lapsed into obscurity. It might have remained there had it not been for the presence of a young Marilyn Monroe in a supporting part.Read More »

  • D.W. Griffith – Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl (1919)

    1911-1920D.W. GriffithDramaSilentUSA

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    Don Druker, Chicago Reader wrote:
    One of D.W. Griffith’s most beautiful films, a 1919 tale of the chaste love of a Chinese man (Richard Barthelmess) for the frail daughter (Lillian Gish) of a loutish boxer. It perfectly fuses all the elements of Griffith’s style: tender drama played off against scenes of violence; a rich, operatic sense of character and emotion; and a dreamlike acting style, given particular force by the subtlety of Gish’s performance and the strength of Barthelmess’s.Read More »

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