Owen Moore was an Irish-born American actor, appearing in more than 279 movies spanning from 1908 to 1937.
Wong Liu Tsong, known professionally as Anna May Wong, was an American actress, considered the first Chinese American film star in Hollywood, as well as the first Chinese American actress to gain international recognition. Her varied career spanned silent film, sound film, television, stage, and radio.
Cyril Joseph Trimnell-Ritchard, known professionally as Cyril Ritchard, was an Australian stage, screen and television actor, and director. He is best remembered today for his performance as Captain Hook in the Mary Martin musical production of Peter Pan. In 1945, he played Gabriele Eisenstein in Gay Rosalinda at the Palace theatre in London, a version of Strauss's Die Fledermaus by Erich Wolfgang Korngold in which he appeared with Peter Graves. The show was conducted by Richard Tauber and ran for almost a year.
Blackmail is a 1929 British thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Anny Ondra, John Longden, and Cyril Ritchard. Based on the 1928 play of the same name by Charles Bennett, the film is about a London woman who is blackmailed after killing a man who tries to rape her.
Gilda Gray was a Polish-American dancer and actress who popularized a dance called the "shimmy" which became fashionable in 1920s films and theater productions.
Show Boat is a 1929 American pre-Code sound part-talkie romantic drama film based on the 1926 novel Show Boat by Edna Ferber. The film initially did not use the 1927 stage musical of the same name as a source, but scenes were later added into the film incorporating two of the songs from the musical as well as other songs. Many of these songs from the stage show were featured in a special prologue that was added to the picture before it was released. This film was produced and released by Universal. Like the majority of films during the early sound era, a silent version was made for movie theatres that had not yet converted to sound.
Phonofilm is an optical sound-on-film system developed by inventors Lee de Forest and Theodore Case in the early 1920s.
Gold Diggers of Broadway is a 1929 American pre-Code musical comedy film directed by Roy Del Ruth and starring Winnie Lightner and Nick Lucas. Distributed by Warner Bros., the film is the second all-talking, all-Technicolor feature-length film.
A part-talkie is a sound film that includes at least some "talking sequences" or sections with audible dialogue. The remainder of the film is provided with a synchronized musical score with sound effects. These films more often than not contain a main theme song that is played during key scenes in the film and is often sung offscreen on the musical soundtrack. During the portion without audible dialogue, speaking parts are presented as intertitles—printed text briefly filling the screen—and the soundtrack is used only to supply musical accompaniment and sound effects.
Frederic Zelnik was an Austrian producer, director, and actor. He was one of the most important producers-directors of the German silent cinema. Zelnik achieved success through period operetta films in the 1920s and 1930s.
Jameson Thomas was an English film actor. He appeared in more than 80 films between 1923 and 1939.
John Longden was a British film actor. He appeared in more than 80 films between 1926 and 1964, including six films directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
Gang War is a 1928 American sound part-talkie gangster film, best known for being the main feature attached to Steamboat Willie, the debut of Mickey Mouse in sound. In addition to sequences with audible dialogue or talking sequences, the film features a synchronized musical score and sound effects along with English intertitles. The soundtrack was recorded using the RCA Photophone sound-on-film system. Despite the synchronised sound as well as the all-star cast, the film is largely unknown in its own right and is now a lost film, being overshadowed by its far more famous preceding short, Steamboat Willie. The film starred Jack Pickford in his last major role as "Clyde", a saxophone player whose love for a dancer named Flowers traps him in the middle of a gang war.
Alias Jimmy Valentine is a 1928 American sound part-talkie crime drama film directed by Jack Conway and starring William Haines, Leila Hyams, Lionel Barrymore, and Karl Dane. The film features talking sequences along with a synchronized musical score with sound effects using both the sound-on-disc and sound-on-film process. The film is based on the 1903 O. Henry story "A Retrieved Reformation", which was turned into the 1910 play Alias Jimmy Valentine by Paul Armstrong. The play toured in travelling production companies making it extremely popular. It was revived on Broadway in 1921. Two previous film adaptations had been produced at the old Metro Studios. A 1915 film version was directed by Maurice Tourneur and a 1920 version starring Bert Lytell was directed by Edmund Mortimer and Arthur Ripley.
"Bill" is a song heard in Act II of Kern and Hammerstein's classic 1927 musical, Show Boat. The song was written by Kern and P. G. Wodehouse for their 1917 musical Oh, Lady! Lady!! for Vivienne Segal to perform, but it was withdrawn because it was considered too melancholy for that show. When Kern and Hammerstein were at work on a serious and somewhat tragic production of Show Boat, however, they decided that the song would be perfect for a nightclub scene in that show. Hammerstein revised Wodehouse's original lyrics somewhat, and the song was given to real-life nightclub singer Helen Morgan to sing as she portrayed the mulatto Julie in that version of Show Boat.
Moulin Rouge is a 1928 British sound drama film directed by Ewald André Dupont and starring Olga Chekhova, Eve Gray and Jean Bradin. While the film has no audible dialog, it was released with a synchronized musical score with sound effects using both the sound-on-disc and sound-on-film process. The film is set in and around the Moulin Rouge cabaret in Paris.
Nothing But the Truth is a 1929 American sound comedy film starring Richard Dix, loosely adapted from the play by James Montgomery and the 1914 novel of the same title by Frederic S. Isham. The play was adapted again as Nothing But the Truth (1941) starring Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard.
Chu-Chin-Chow is a 1923 British-German silent adventure film directed by Herbert Wilcox and starring Betty Blythe, Herbert Langley, and Randle Ayrton.
The Flame of Love, also known as The Road to Dishonour and Hai-Tang, is a 1930 British drama film, a love story between an Imperial Russian army officer and a Chinese actress. Directed by Richard Eichberg and Walter Summers, it stars Anna May Wong and John Longden. It was made at Elstree Studios by British International Pictures. The film's art directors were Clarence Elder, Willi Herrmann, and Werner Schlichting (uncredited).
Pavement Butterfly is a 1929 British-German silent drama film directed by Richard Eichberg and starring Anna May Wong, Alexander Granach, and Gaston Jacquet. It was part of an ongoing co-production arrangement between Eichberg and British International Pictures.
