In 1916, film producer Adolph Zukor put 24 actors and actresses under contract and honored each with a star on the logo. In 1967, the number of stars was reduced to 22 and their hidden meaning was dropped. In 2014, Paramount Pictures became the first major Hollywood studio to distribute all of its films in digital form only. The company's headquarters and studios are located at 5555 Melrose Avenue, Hollywood, California.

Paramount Pictures is a member of the Motion Picture Association (MPA).

History

Famous Players Film Company

Paramount is the fifth oldest surviving film studio in the world; after the French studios Gaumont Film Company (1895) and Pathé (1896), Titanus (1904), followed by the Nordisk Film company (1906), and Universal Studios (1912). It is the last major film studio still headquartered in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles.

Paramount Pictures dates its existence from the 1912 founding date of the Famous Players Film Company. Hungarian-born founder Adolph Zukor, who had been an early investor in nickelodeons, saw that movies appealed mainly to working-class immigrants. With partners Daniel Frohman and Charles Frohman he planned to offer feature-length films that would appeal to the middle class by featuring the leading theatrical players of the time (leading to the slogan "Famous Players in Famous Plays"). By mid-1913, Famous Players had completed five films, and Zukor was on his way to success. Its first film was Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth, which starred Sarah Bernhardt.

That same year, another aspiring producer, Jesse L. Lasky, opened his Lasky Feature Play Company with money borrowed from his brother-in-law, Samuel Goldfish, later known as Samuel Goldwyn. The Lasky company hired as their first employee a stage director with virtually no film experience, Cecil B. DeMille, who would find a suitable site in Hollywood. This place was a rented old horse barn converted into a production facility with an enlarged open-air stage located between Vine Street, Selma Avenue, Argyle Avenue and Sunset Boulevard. It was later known as the Lasky-DeMille Barn. In 1914, their first feature film, The Squaw Man was released.

On May 8, 1914, Paramount Pictures Corporation (previously known as Progressive Pictures) was founded by a Utah theatre owner, W. W. Hodkinson, who had bought and merged five smaller firms. On May 15, 1914, Hodkinson signed a five-year contract with the Famous Players Film Company, the Lasky Company and Bosworth, Inc. to distribute their films. Actor, director and producer Hobart Bosworth had started production of a series of Jack London movies. Paramount was the first successful nationwide distributor; until this time, films were sold on a statewide or regional basis which had proved costly to film producers. Also, Famous Players and Lasky were privately owned while Paramount was a corporation.

Famous Players-Lasky

In 1916, Zukor engineered a three-way merger of his Famous Players, the Lasky Company, and Paramount. Zukor and Lasky bought Hodkinson out of Paramount, and merged the three companies into one. The new company Lasky and Zukor founded on June 28, Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, although it continued to use the name "Paramount" as well. As a result, it became he largest film company at the time with a value of $12.5 million. The corporation was able to grow quickly, with Lasky and his partners Goldwyn and DeMille running the production side, Hiram Abrams in charge of distribution, and Zukor making great plans. With only the exhibitor-owned First National as a rival, Famous Players-Lasky and its "Paramount Pictures" soon dominated the business. The fusion was finalized on November 7, 1916.

Because Zukor believed in stars, he signed and developed many of the leading early stars, including Mary Pickford, Marguerite Clark, Pauline Frederick, Douglas Fairbanks, Gloria Swanson, Rudolph Valentino, and Wallace Reid. With so many important players, Paramount was able to introduce "block booking", which meant that an exhibitor who wanted a particular star's films had to buy a year's worth of other Paramount productions. It was this system that gave Paramount a leading position in the 1920s and 1930s, but which led the government to pursue it on antitrust grounds for more than twenty years.

By the mid-1920s, the old Lasky-DeMille barn property was not big enough to handle all of the studios' West Coast productions. On January 5, 1926, Lasky reached an agreement to buy the Robert Brunton Studios, a 26-acre facility owned by United Pictures and located at 5451 Marathon Street, for US$1 million. On March 29, the company began an eight-month building program to renovate the existing facilities and erect new ones. On May 8, Lasky finally moved operations from the Sunset and Vine lot to the new building. At present, those facilities are still part of the Paramount Pictures headquarters. Zukor hired independent producer B. P. Schulberg, an unerring eye for new talent, to run the new West Coast operations.

On April 1, 1927, the company name was changed to Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation. In September 1927, the Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation studio in Astoria (New York City) was temporarily closed with the objective of equipping it with the technology for the production of sound films. In the same year, Paramount began releasing Inkwell Imps, animated cartoons produced by Max and Dave Fleischer's Fleischer Studios in New York City. The Fleischers, veterans in the animation industry, were among the few animation producers capable of challenging the prominence of Walt Disney. The Paramount newsreel series Paramount News ran from 1927 to 1957. Paramount was also one of the first Hollywood studios to release what were known at that time as "talkies", and in 1929, released their first musical, Innocents of Paris. Richard A. Whiting and Leo Robin composed the score for the film; Maurice Chevalier starred and sang the most famous song from the film, "Louise".

Publix, Balaban and Katz, Loew's competition and wonder theaters

The driving force behind Paramount's rise was Zukor. He built a chain of nearly 2,000 screens, ran two production studios (in Astoria, New York, now the Kaufman Astoria Studios, and Hollywood, California), and became an early investor in radio, acquiring for the corporation a 50% interest in the new Columbia Broadcasting System in 1928 (selling it within a few years; this would not be the last time Paramount and CBS crossed paths).

By acquiring the successful Balaban & Katz chain in 1926, Zukor gained the services of Barney Balaban (who would eventually become Paramount's president in 1936), his brother A. J. Balaban (who would eventually supervise all stage production nationwide and produce talkie shorts), and their partner Sam Katz (who would run the Paramount-Publix theatre chain in New York City from the thirty-five-story Paramount Theatre Building on Times Square).

Balaban and Katz had developed the Wonder Theater concept, first publicized around 1918 in Chicago. The Chicago Theater was created as a very ornate theater and advertised as a "wonder theater". When Publix acquired Balaban, they embarked on a project to expand the wonder theaters, and starting building in New York City in 1927. While Balaban and Public were dominant in Chicago, Loew's was the big player in New York City, and did not want the Publix theaters to overshadow theirs. The two companies brokered a non-competition deal for New York City and Chicago, and Loew's took over the New York City area projects, developing five wonder theaters. Publix continued Balaban's wonder theater development in its home area.

On April 24, 1930, Paramount-Famous Lasky Corporation became the Paramount Publix Corporation.

1920s and 1931–40: Receivership and reorganization

Eventually, Zukor shed most of his early partners; the Frohman brothers, Hodkinson and Goldwyn were out by 1917 while Lasky hung on until 1932, when, blamed for the near-collapse of Paramount in the Great Depression years, he too was tossed out. In 1931, to solve the financial problems of the company Zukor hired John D. Hertz as chairman of the finance committee in order to assist vice-president and treasurer Ralph A. Kohn. However, on January 6, 1933, Hertz resigned from his position when it become evident that his measures to lift the company had failed. The over-expansion and use of overvalued Paramount stock for purchases created a $21 million debt which led the company into receivership on January 26, 1933^[ and later filing bankruptcy on March 14, 1933. On April 17, 1933, bankruptcy trustees were appointed and Zukor lost control of the company. The company remained under the control of trustees for more than a year in order to restructure the debt and pursue a reorganization plan. On December 3, 1934, the reorganization plan was formally proposed. After prolonged hearings in court, final confirmation was obtained on April 25, 1935, when Federal Judge Alfred C. Coxe Jr. approved the reorganization of the Paramount-Publix Corporation under Section 77-B of the Bankruptcy Act.

On June 4, 1935 John E. Otterson became president of the re-emerged and newly renamed Paramount Pictures Inc. Zukor returned to the company and was named production chief but after Barney Balaban was appointed president on July 2, 1936, he was soon replaced by Y. Frank Freeman and symbolically named chairman of the board On August 28, 1935, Paramount Pictures was re-listed on the New York Stock Exchange and after the company was under Balaban's leadership, the studio was successfully relauched.

As always, Paramount films continued to emphasize stars; in the 1920s there were Gloria Swanson, Wallace Reid, Rudolph Valentino, Florence Vidor, Thomas Meighan, Pola Negri, Bebe Daniels, Antonio Moreno, Richard Dix, Esther Ralston, Emil Jannings, George Bancroft, Betty Compson, Clara Bow, Adolphe Menjou, and Charles Buddy Rogers. By the late 1920s and the early 1930s, talkies brought in a range of powerful draws: Richard Arlen, Nancy Carroll, Maurice Chevalier, Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich, Charles Ruggles, Ruth Chatterton, William Powell, Mae West, Sylvia Sidney, Bing Crosby, Claudette Colbert, the Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields, Fredric March, Jack Oakie, Jeanette MacDonald (whose first two films were shot at Paramount's Astoria, New York, studio), Carole Lombard, George Raft, Miriam Hopkins, Cary Grant and Stuart Erwin, among them. In this period Paramount can truly be described as a movie factory, turning out sixty to seventy pictures a year. Such were the benefits of having a huge theater chain to fill, and of block booking to persuade other chains to go along. In 1933, Mae West would also add greatly to Paramount's success with her suggestive movies She Done Him Wrong and I'm No Angel. However, the sex appeal West gave in these movies would also lead to the enforcement of the Production Code, as the newly formed organization the Catholic Legion of Decency threatened a boycott if it was not enforced. Paramount cartoons produced by Fleischer Studios continued to be successful, with characters such as Betty Boop and Popeye the Sailor becoming widely successful. One Fleischer series, Screen Songs, featured live-action music stars under contract to Paramount hosting sing-alongs of popular songs. The animation studio would rebound with Popeye, and in 1935, polls showed that Popeye was even more popular than Mickey Mouse. After an unsuccessful expansion into feature films, as well as the fact that Max and Dave Fleischer were no longer speaking to one another, Fleischer Studios was acquired by Paramount, which renamed the operation Famous Studios. That incarnation of the animation studio continued cartoon production until 1967, but has been historically dismissed as having largely failed to maintain the artistic acclaim the Fleischer brothers achieved under their management.

Pearl Zane Grey (January 31, 1872 – October 23, 1939) was an American author and dentist. He is known for his popular adventure novels and stories associated with the Western genre in literature and the arts; he idealized the American frontier. Riders of the Purple Sage (1912) was his best-selling book.

In addition to the success of his printed works, his books have second lives and continuing influence adapted for films and television. His novels and short stories were adapted into 112 films, two television episodes, and a television series, Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre.

Biography

Early life

Pearl Zane Grey was born January 31, 1872, in Zanesville, Ohio. His birth name may have originated from newspaper descriptions of Queen Victoria's mourning clothes as "pearl grey." He was the fourth of five children born to Alice "Allie" Josephine Zane, whose English Quaker immigrant ancestor Robert Zane came to the American colonies in 1673, and her husband, Lewis M. Gray, a dentist. His family changed the spelling of its last name to "Grey" after his birth. Later Grey dropped Pearl and used Zane as his first name.

He grew up in Zanesville, a city founded by his paternal grandfather Benjamin Zane's brother-in-law, John McIntire (husband of Sarah Zane), who had been given the land by Zane's maternal great-grandfather Ebenezer Zane, an American Revolutionary War patriot.

Both Zane and his brother Romer were active, athletic boys who were enthusiastic baseball players and fishermen. From an early age, he was intrigued by history. Soon, he developed an interest in writing. His early interests contributed to his later writing success.^[For example, his knowledge of history informed his first three novels, which recounted the heroism of ancestors who fought in the American Revolutionary War

As a child, Grey frequently engaged in violent brawls, probably related to his father's punishing him with severe beatings. Though irascible and antisocial like his father, Grey was supported by a loving mother and found a father substitute. Muddy Miser was an old man who approved of Grey's love of fishing and writing, and who talked about the advantages of an unconventional life. Despite warnings by Grey's father to steer clear of Miser, the boy spent much time during five formative years in the company of the old man.

Grey was an avid reader of adventure stories such as Robinson Crusoe and the Leatherstocking Tales, as well as dime novels featuring Buffalo Bill and Deadwood Dick. He was enthralled by and crudely copied the great illustrators Howard Pyle and Frederic Remington. He was particularly impressed with Our Western Border, a history of the Ohio frontier that likely inspired his earliest novels. Zane wrote his first story, Jim of the Cave, when he was fifteen. His father tore it to shreds and beat him.

Because of the shame he felt as the result of a severe financial setback in 1889 due to a poor investment, Lewis Grey moved his family from Zanesville and started again in Columbus, Ohio. While his father struggled to re-establish his dental practice, Zane Grey made rural house calls and performed basic extractions, which his father had taught him. The younger Grey practiced until the state board intervened. His brother Romer earned money by driving a delivery wagon. Grey also worked as a part-time usher in a theater and played summer baseball for the Columbus Capitols, with aspirations of becoming a major leaguer.Eventually, Grey was spotted by a baseball scout and received offers from many colleges. Romer also attracted scouts’ attention and went on to have a professional baseball career.

University of Pennsylvania and baseball

Grey chose the University of Pennsylvania on a baseball scholarship, where he studied dentistry and joined Sigma Nu fraternity; he graduated in 1896. When he arrived at Penn, he had to prove himself worthy of a scholarship before receiving it. He rose to the occasion by coming in to pitch against the Riverton club, pitching five scoreless innings and producing a double in the tenth which contributed to the win. The Ivy League was highly competitive and an excellent training ground for future pro baseball players. Grey was a solid hitter and an excellent pitcher who relied on a sharply dropping curveball. When the distance from the pitcher's mound to the plate was lengthened by ten feet in 1894 (primarily to reduce the dominance of Cy Young's pitching), the effectiveness of Grey's pitching suffered. He was re-positioned to the outfield. The short, wiry baseball player remained a campus hero on the strength of his timely hitting.

He was an indifferent scholar, barely achieving a minimum average. Outside class, he spent his time on baseball, swimming, and creative writing, especially poetry. His shy nature and his teetotaling set him apart from other students, and he socialized little. Grey struggled with the idea of becoming a writer or baseball player for his career, but unhappily concluded that dentistry was the practical choice.

During a summer break, while playing "summer nines" in Delphos, Ohio, Grey was charged with, and quietly settled, a paternity suit. His father paid the $133.40 cost and Grey resumed playing summer baseball. He concealed the episode when he returned to Penn.

Grey went on to play minor league baseball with several teams, including the Newark, New Jersey Colts in 1898 and also with the Orange Athletic Club for several years. His brother Romer Carl "Reddy" Grey (known as "R.C." to his family) did better and played professionally in the minor leagues. Zane Grey and Romer Grey played together as teammates for the 1895 Findlay Sluggers of the Interstate League. Romer played a single major league game in 1903 for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Dentistry

After graduating, Grey established his practice in New York City under the name of Dr. Zane Grey in 1896. It was a competitive area but he wanted to be close to publishers. He began to write in the evening to offset the tedium of his dental practice. He struggled financially and emotionally. Grey was a natural writer but his early efforts were stiff and grammatically weak. Whenever possible, he played baseball with the Orange Athletic Club in New Jersey, a team of former collegiate players that was one of the best amateur teams in the country.

Grey often went camping with his brother R.C. in Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania, where they fished in the upper Delaware River. When canoeing in 1900, Grey met seventeen-year-old Lina Roth, better known as "Dolly." Dolly came from a family of physicians and was studying to be a schoolteache
Marriage and family

After a passionate and intense courtship marked by frequent quarrels, Grey and Dolly married five years later in 1905. Grey suffered bouts of depression, anger, and mood swings, which affected him most of his life. As he described it, "A hyena lying in ambush—that is my black spell! I conquered one mood only to fall prey to the next ... I wandered about like a lost soul or a man who was conscious of imminent death."

During his courtship of Dolly, Grey still saw previous girlfriends and warned her frankly,

But I love to be free. I cannot change my spots. The ordinary man is satisfied with a moderate income, a home, wife, children, and all that. ... But I am a million miles from being that kind of man and no amount of trying will ever do any good ... I shall never lose the spirit of my interest in women.

After they married in 1905, Dolly gave up her teaching career. They moved to a farmhouse at the confluence of the Lackawaxen and Delaware rivers, in Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania, where Grey's mother and sister joined them. (This house, now preserved and operated as the Zane Grey Museum, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.) Grey finally ceased his dental practice to work full-time on his nascent literary pursuits. Dolly's inheritance provided an initial financial cushion.

Early writing career

While Dolly managed Grey's career and raised their three children, including son Romer Zane Grey, over the next two decades Grey often spent months away from the family. He fished, wrote, and spent time with his many mistresses. While Dolly knew of his behavior, she seemed to view it as his handicap rather than a choice. Throughout their life together, he highly valued her management of his career and their family, and her solid emotional support. In addition to her considerable editorial skills, she had good business sense and handled all his contract negotiations with publishers, agents, and movie studios. All his income was split fifty-fifty with her; from her "share," she covered all family expenses. Their considerable correspondence shows evidence of his lasting love for her despite his infidelities and personal emotional turmoil.

The Greys moved to California in 1918. In 1920 they settled in Altadena, California, at a home later known as the '"Zane Grey Estate"'. In Altadena Grey also spent time with his mistress Brenda Montenegro. The two met while hiking Eaton Canyon. Of her he wrote,

I saw her flowing raven mane against the rocks of the canyon. I have seen the red skin of the Navajo, and the olive of the Spaniards, but her ... her skin looked as if her Creator had in that instant molded her just for me. I thought it was an apparition. She seemed to be the embodiment of the West I portray in my books, open and wild.

Grey summed up his feelings for the city: "In Altadena, I have found those qualities that make life worth living."

With the help of Dolly's proofreading and copy editing, Grey gradually improved his writing. His first magazine article, "A Day on the Delaware," a human-interest story about a Grey brothers' fishing expedition, was published in the May 1902 issue of Recreation magazine. Elated at selling the article, Grey offered reprints to patients in his waiting room. In writing, Grey found temporary escape from the harshness of his life and his demons. "Realism is death to me. I cannot stand life as it is." By this time, he had given up baseball.

Grey read Owen Wister's great Western novel The Virginian. After studying its style and structure in detail, he decided to write a full-length work. Grey had difficulties in writing his first novel, Betty Zane (1903). When it was rejected by Harper & Brothers, he lapsed into despair. The novel dramatized the heroism of an ancestor, Betty Zane who had saved Fort Henry. He self-published it, perhaps with funds provided by his wife Dolly or his brother R. C.'s wealthy girlfriend Reba Smith. From the beginning, vivid description was the strongest aspect of his writing.

After attending a lecture in New York in 1907 at the Camp-Fire Club by Charles Jesse "Buffalo" Jones, western hunter and guide who had co-founded Garden City, Kansas, Grey arranged for a mountain lion-hunting trip to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. He brought along a camera to document his trips and prove his adventures. He also began the habit of taking copious notes, not only of scenery and activities but of dialogue. His first two trips were arduous, but Grey learned much from his compatriot adventurers. He gained the confidence to write convincingly about the American West, its characters, and its landscape. Treacherous river crossings, unpredictable beasts, bone-chilling cold, searing heat, parching thirst, bad water, irascible tempers, and heroic cooperation all became real to him. He wrote, "Surely, of all the gifts that have come to me from contact with the West, this one of sheer love of wildness, beauty, color, grandeur, has been the greatest, the most significant for my work."

Upon returning home in 1909, Grey wrote a new novel, The Last of the Plainsmen, describing the adventures of Buffalo Jones. Harper's editor Ripley Hitchcock rejected it, the fourth work in a row. He told Grey, "I do not see anything in this to convince me you can write either narrative or fiction." Grey wrote dejectedly,

I don't know which way to turn. I cannot decide what to write next. That which I desire to write does not seem to be what the editors want ... I am full of stories and zeal and fire ... yet I am inhibited by doubt, by fear that my feeling for life is false.

The book was later published by the American magazine, Outing, which provided Grey some satisfaction. Grey next wrote a series of magazine articles and juvenile novels.

With the birth of his first child pending, Grey felt compelled to complete his next novel, The Heritage of the Desert. He wrote it in four months in 1910. It quickly became a bestseller. Grey took his next work to Hitchcock again; this time Harper published his work, a historical romance in which Mormon characters were of central importance. Grey continued to write popular novels about Manifest Destiny, the conquest of the Old West, and the behavior of men in elemental conditions.

Two years later Grey produced his best-known book, Riders of the Purple Sage (1912), his all-time best-seller, and one of the most successful Western novels in history. Hitchcock rejected it, but Grey took his manuscript directly to the vice president of Harper, who accepted it. The novel had a sequel (The Rainbow Trail in 1915), and was filmed five times (in 1918, 1925, 1931, 1941, and 1996; but in later film versions the villains are corrupt judges or lawyers, not Mormon polygamists).

Charles Douglas MacLean (January 10, 1890 – July 9, 1967) was an American stage and silent film actor who later worked as a producer and screenwriter in the sound era.

Early life and stage career

Born in Philadelphia, MacLean was educated at Northwestern University and Lewis Institute of Technology, in Chicago. Although he came from a Navy family and was slated for Annapolis, he chose a different career path. After working as a bond salesman, MacLean enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts^[1] and later played juvenile leads in repertory theatre and performed as supporting characters in major stage productions such as Peter Pan starring Maude Adams.

Film

MacLean's first film was the 1914 production As Ye Sow with Alice Brady, followed by bit parts in Fuss and Feathers and in two Mary Pickford features, Captain Kidd, Jr. and Johanna Enlists. He went on to appear with Dorothy Gish in The Hun Within, and he co-starred with Doris May in the romantic comedy 23 1/2 Hours' Leave, which was a big hit. From 1922 to 1929 he starred in 14 other features for Paramount and First National, all maintaining the standard light romantic comedy formula that continued to prove successful for him. MacLean during his film career was often billed as "The Man With the Million Dollar Smile". In 1929 he was cast in his only "talkie", Divorce Made Easy; he then retired from acting.

Producer and screenwriter

In 1932, MacLean made his debut as a producer with Ladies of the Jury. He produced a total of eight films for Paramount, including Tillie and Gus starring W.C. Fields, Ladies Should Listen starring Cary Grant, and Two for Tonight. He retired from film production in 1937 but continued to work as a freelance writer for movies and television during the 1940s and 1950s.

Underworld (also released as Paying the Penalty) is a 1927 American silent crime film directed by Josef von Sternberg^[1] and starring Clive Brook, Evelyn Brent and George Bancroft. The film launched Sternberg's eight-year collaboration with Paramount Pictures, with whom he would produce his seven films with actress Marlene Dietrich. Journalist and screenwriter Ben Hecht won an Academy Award for Best Original Story

Plot

Boisterous gangster kingpin 'Bull' Weed rehabilitates the down-and-out 'Rolls Royce' Wensel, a former lawyer who has fallen into alcoholism. The two become confidants, with Rolls Royce's intelligence aiding Weed's schemes, but complications arise when Rolls Royce falls for Weed's girlfriend 'Feathers' McCoy.

Adding to Weed's troubles are attempts by a rival gangster, 'Buck' Mulligan, to muscle in on his territory. Their antagonism climaxes with Weed killing Mulligan and he is imprisoned. Awaiting a death sentence, Rolls Royce devises an escape plan, but he and Feathers face a dilemma, wondering if they should elope together and leave Bull Weed to his fate.

Cast

• Clive Brook as "Rolls Royce" Wensel
• Evelyn Brent as "Feathers" McCoy
• George Bancroft as "Bull" Weed
• Fred Kohler as "Buck" Mulligan
• Helen Lynch as Meg, Mulligan's girl
• Larry Semon as "Slippy" Lewis
• Jerry Mandy as Paloma
• Alfred Allen as Judge (uncredited)
• Shep Houghton as Street Kid (uncredited)
• Andy MacLennan as One of Laughing Faces at the Ball (uncredited)
• Ida May as Laughing Woman at the Ball (uncredited)
• Karl Morse as 'High Collar' Sam (uncredited)
• Julian Rivero as One of Buck's Henchmen (uncredited)

The City Gone Wild (1927) is a silent gangster film produced by Famous Players-Lasky and distributed by Paramount Pictures. The film starred Louise Brooks and was directed by James Cruze, and is now a lost film.

The last known copy of this film was nearly saved in the late 1960s by preservationist David Shepard for deposit at AFI. Paramount had also contracted with junk men to haul off their old rusting reels with the film still wound on. Shepard arrived at the studio just as junkmen carted the film off for disposal.

Cast

• Thomas Meighan - John Phelan
• Marietta Millner - Nada Winthrop
• Louise Brooks - Snuggles Joy
• Fred Kohler - Gunner Gallagher
• Duke Martin - Lefty Schroeder
• Nancy Phillips - Lefty's girl
• Wyndham Standing - Frank Ames
• Charles Hill Mailes - Luther Winthrop
• King Zany - the bondsman
• Gunboat Smith - the policeman

Jesse James is a 1927 American silent Western film produced by Adolph Zukor and Jesse L. Lasky and released through Paramount Pictures. The film was directed by Lloyd Ingraham and starred cowboy star Fred Thomson whose wife Frances Marion wrote the scenario under the nom de plume Frank M. Clifton.

The film was a light approach on the life of the famous outlaw, Jesse James, and was not popular with a large segment of the audience. Jesse E. James, the outlaw's son, served as technical advisor on the film.

Cast

• Fred Thomson as Jesse James
• Nora Lane as Zerelda Mimms
• Montagu Love as Frederick Mimms
• Mary Carr as Mrs. Zerelda Samuels
• James Pierce as Frank James
• Harry Woods as Bob Ford
• William Courtright as Parson Bill
• Silver King the Horse as Fred Thomson's steed
• Ruby Fornes (uncredited)
• Johnny Downs as Jesse James as a boy (uncredited)

Red Hair is a 1928 silent film starring Clara Bow and Lane Chandler, directed by Clarence G. Badger, based on a 1905 novel by Elinor Glyn, and released by Paramount Pictures.

The film had one sequence filmed in Technicolor, and is now considered a lost film except for the color sequence at the UCLA Film and Television Archive, and a few production stills.
Plot

A free-spirited young girl has three middle-aged admirers, each of whom sees her from a completely different perspective. Unknown to her, they also happen to be the guardians of a wealthy young man to whom she is attracted.

Cast

• Clara Bow as Bubbles McCoy
• Lane Chandler as Robert Lennon
• William Austin as Dr. Eustace Gill
• Jacqueline Gadsden as Minnie Luther
• Lawrence Grant as Judge Rufus Lennon
• Claude King as Thomas L. Burke
• William Irving as Demmy

Shanghai Bound is a lost 1927 American silent adventure film directed by Luther Reed and written by John F. Goodrich, Ray Harris, Julian Johnson, and E.S. O'Reilly. The film stars Richard Dix, Mary Brian, Charles Byer, George Irving, Jocelyn Lee, Tom Maguire, and Frank Chew. The film was released on October 15, 1927, by Paramount Pictures.^[3][4]

Cast

• Richard Dix as Jim Bucklin
• Mary Brian as Sheila
• Charles Byer as Payson
• George Irving as Louden
• Jocelyn Lee as Shanghai Rose
• Tom Maguire as Smith
• Frank Chew as Yen
• Allan Cavan
• Tom Gubbins as Local Agent
• Arthur Hoyt as Algy
• Tetsu Komai as Scarface

Open Range is a lost 1927 American silent Western film directed by Clifford Smith and written by Roy Briant, Zane Grey, J. Walter Ruben and John Stone. The film stars Betty Bronson, Lane Chandler, Fred Kohler, Bernard Siegel, Guy Oliver, Jim Corey and Buck Connors. The film was released on November 11, 1927, by Paramount Pictures.

Cast

• Betty Bronson as Lucy Blake
• Lane Chandler as Tex Smith
• Fred Kohler as Sam Hardman
• Bernard Siegel as Brave Bear
• Guy Oliver as Jim Blake
• Jim Corey as Red
• Buck Connors as Sheriff Daley

The Woman on Trial is a 1927 American silent film directed by Mauritz Stiller, starring Pola Negri, and based on the play Confession by Erno Wajda (aka Ernest Vajda). Adolph Zukor, Jesse L. Lasky, and B. P. Schulberg produced for Paramount Pictures.

Fragments of this film survive at Museum of Modern Art. A reel of outtakes are held at George Eastman House.

Cast[edit]

• Pola Negri as Julie
• Einar Hanson as Pierre Bouton
• Arnold Kent as Gaston Napier
• Andre Sarti as John Morland
• Baby Dorothy Brock as Paul
• Valentina Zimina as Henrietta
• Sidney Bracey as Brideaux
• Bertram Marburgh as Morland's Lawyer
• Gayne Whitman as Julie's Lawyer

A Gentleman of Paris is a 1927 American silent comedy film loosely based on the novel and play Bellamay the Magnificent by Roy Horniman. The film was directed by Harry d'Abbadie d'Arrast and stars Adolphe Menjou, Arlette Marchal, Nicholas Soussanin, Lawrence Grant, and William B. Davidson. The feature has been preserved and was released on DVD in 2010. The movie was also the basis for the 1928 film A Certain Young Man.

Plot summary

Marquis de Marignan is a brazen womanizer who spends most of his life escaping the wrath of husbands he has angered. Joseph, his faithful valet frequently rescues Marignan from disaster. But when Joseph finds out that his boss has been sleeping with his wife, he plots a scheme to publicly humiliate Marquis by exposing him as a card cheat. The ruse works, but Marignan manages to have the last laugh by faking his own suicide and returning to haunt Joseph into confessing his scheme.

Cast

• Adolphe Menjou as Marquis de Marignan
• Shirley O'Hara as Jacqueline
• Arlette Marchal as Yvonne Dufour
• Ivy Harris as Henriette
• Nicholas Soussanin as Joseph Talineau
• Lawrence Grant as General Baron de Latour
• William B. Davidson as Henri Dufour
• Lorraine MacLean as Cloakroom Girl

Soft Cushions is a 1927 American comedy film directed by Edward F. Cline and featuring Boris Karloff.  It is a comic take by actor and producer Douglas MacLean on the 1911 play Kismet and the 1920 silent film adaptation. It is listed as being lost by Arne Andersen's Lost Film Files website

Cast

• Douglas MacLean as The Young Thief
• Sue Carol as The Girl
• Richard Carle as The Slave Dealer
• Russ Powell as The Fat Thief (as Russell Powell)
• Frank Leigh as The Lean Thief
• Wade Boteler as The Police Judge
• Nigel De Brulier as The Notary
• Albert Prisco as The Wazir
• Boris Karloff as The Chief Conspirator
• Albert Gran as The Sultan
• Fred Kelsey as Policeman
• Harry L. Fraser as The Citizen (as Harry Jones)
• Noble Johnson as The Captain of the Guard