US
In an attempt to brand himself as a serious actor, the smiling swashbuckler Douglas Fairbanks starred in THE HALF-BREED (1916), a Western melodrama written by Anita Loos and directed with flair by Allan Dwan. Fairbanks stars as Lo Dorman, who has been ostracized from society because of this mixed ethnicity - his Native American mother was abandoned by his white father. When Lo catches the eye of the rich white debutante Nellie (Jewel Carmen), he becomes a target for the racist Sheriff Dunn (Sam De Grasse), who wants to break them up and take Nelli for his own. This love triangle becomes a quadrangle with the arrival of Teresa (Alma Rubens), who is on the run from the law. Through fire and fury Lo must decide who and what he truly loves.
Jul 1916
Karl Heinrich is the heir to the throne of the small European principality of Rutania, but he's a lonely child, not allowed to play with other children and knowing little about life outside the castle. When he reaches maturity, he is sent to attend the University of Heidelberg, and finds fellowshi with classmates and a blossoming love with Katie Ruder, his only friend during childhood and the niece of an innkeeper. However, political turmoil in Rutania forces him to return. War is declared. Heinrich returns to Heidelberg one last time to bid a somber farewell to his beloved Katie.
Nov 1915
Doug is an American mining engineer. Pres. Valdez of Paragonia wants him to reopen the country's mines. Doug is not interested ... until he sees the President's beautiful daughter, Juana. Valdez returns to Paragonia, but is deposed by Generals Sanchez and Garcia and locked in San Mateo Prison. The Americano arrives...
Dec 1916
A young man fights to overcome a piratical arms smuggler and to win the heart of a rich man's daughter.
Nov 1916
Based on Henrik Ibsen's play from 1877.
Aug 1916
Produced at the Reliance studio in Yonkers, New York, HIS PICTURE IN THE PAPERS solidly established Fairbanks as the American ideal of pop, vim, and vigor. Furthermore, the film brought him together with the two collaborators who were to play a profound role in the evolution of his screen persona: writer Anita Loos and her future husband, director John Emerson. The theme was, according to Emerson and Loos, "the great American love of publicity."
Feb 1916
A young couple attempts to elope, with the bride's irate father in hot pursuit. The train stops briefly and the young man dashes off to find a minister, but before he can get himself and the minister onto the train, it leaves, carrying his bride-to- be away. Now the young man, minister in tow, pursues his bride while her father and a horde of lawmen pursue them both.
Gretchen Van Houck is just arriving in the USA, on a ship from Holland. She joins her father, who has already spent several years in America, where he owns an engraving business. In the tenement community where the Van Houcks live, there are residents of many nationalities. Gretchen soon becomes close friends with Pietro, a popular resident, and she also takes an interest in the widow Garrity and her children. Another resident, Rogers, is more mysterious. One day Rogers tells Mr. Van Houck that he could help him get a job printing money for the government. Van Houck eagerly agrees to try, but when he finds out what Rogers is really doing, he is placed in a painful dilemma.
Sep 1916
Small town youth Jimmie Bates is a well-intentioned, but troubled youth. Jimmie is a rowdy boy who is always getting into trouble and playing pranks on his friends and neighbors. Although deeply in love with young Mary, he eventually spurns Mary's affection for the more outgoing and worldly young Ruth.
Feb 1917
The story of the defense of the mission-turned-fortress by 185 Texans against an overwhelming Mexican army in 1836.
At the end of the Civil War, engineer Jim Bludso, accompanied by his friend, Banty Tim, returns home to the town of Gilgal, and discovers that his wife Gabrielle has deserted him and their son Breeches for another man. Jim is welcomed by Kate Taggart, the village storekeeper's daughter, and their attachment deepens until Gabrielle returns after being deserted by her paramour, and Jim forgives her for their son's sake. Meanwhile, Ben Merrill, an unscrupulous contractor who has built the town levee, fears that the structure will not hold the coming flood waters. Merrill destroys the levee and attempts to place the blame on Jim and Banty Tim. In the flood, Gabrielle is killed, but before dying, she exposes Merrill as the man for whom she had deserted her home. This information reaches Jim when he and Merrill are aboard the boat The Prairie Bell . In the ensuing fight, the ship catches fire and explodes. Rescued from the debris by Banty Tim, Jim marries Kate and begins a new life.
Gerald, the somewhat frail son of a wealthy New York family, is bested at the beach by Bill, a strapping young cowboy from Arizona. His fiancée Mary, ashamed of Gerald's "yellow streak", leaves him and goes by train to visit some friends in Arizona, with Bill in tow. Gerald follows them, and before long he and Mary winds up captured by Yaqui Indians and Gerald must prove to Mary that he is not the "weakling" she thinks he is by coming up with a plan for them to escape their captors.
Philip de Mornay, a courtier in the French royal court of the 18th century, falls in love with Daphne La Tour, the daughter of a nobleman. Knowing that her family would never approve of their marriage, he takes her and hides her in a brothel, but is soon captured by pirates. Soldiers looking for women to bring with them to a settlement across the ocean in Louisiana raid the brothel and take the girls, including Daphne. Later on the trip to the new world their ship is attacked by pirates--and she discovers that her lover Philip is on board the pirate ship.
Mar 1916
What will become of the Children in a home divided....
Renee is a French artist's model who uses morphine as an escape from the dull reality of her life. She recommends it to a neurotic artist because "it kindles the fires of genius." The artist quickly becomes addicted to the drug and the quality of his work begins to disintegrate. He takes on a new model, marries her, and starts her on the same path of moral degradation, until a guilt-ridden Renee decides to intervene in order to save them both. According to silent film historian Kevin Brownlow, THE DEVIL'S NEEDLE was banned by the state of Ohio, but the censor board reversed its decision after recognizing the positive message beneath the film's scandalous surface. This special edition was mastered from a 35mm preservation print of the 1923 re-release version. The only known surviving copy, the element suffers significant nitrate decomposition during some scenes.
Phillips Christy an amateur sociologist from a wealthy family, subscribes to the theory that people are shaped by their environment. When he falls in love with Diane, a showgirl from the follies, he sees a chance to prove his theory, but fate intervenes .......
Nina, a blind girl, lives with her grandmother, who has taught her to make artificial flowers, which she sells at a flower-stand. Nina, and Jimmie, a crippled newsboy who sells papers on the same corner, are sweethearts. Nina's grandmother dies, and she turns to Jimmie. One day Jimmie has a fight with another newsboy, whom he thinks is hanging about Nina's stand too much, and the other boy is soon begging for mercy. Miss Fifi Chandler, an artist, happens to be passing, and becoming interested, she accompanies Nina and Jimmie to their rooms, and is surprised to find that Jimmie is an artist, having made a beautiful plaster cast of Nina. Fifi brings Jimmie and his protégé to the notice of her fellow artist, Fred Townsend, who falls in love with Nina.
Jan 1917
An attractive young girl struggles to hold a job as she deals with unwanted romantic advances from her boss.
A teenage orphan (who believes herself to be "hoodooed") is taken in by a childless couple and quickly falls for the boy next door; Her luck seems to have changed. But the idyll is broken up after a trip to the movies-- It seems the 'hoodoo' has returned after she tries to replicate what she'd seen on the screen.