Underground Favorites Mirroring the Impact of His Jonah Day: Cult G...

Dir: Jess Robbins

Position is everything in life, and Wanda, from the sidewalk, is riding in a limousine. But when the gas buggy stops, and she doesn't - it is highly evident that she has only been riding on a bicycle. A traffic cop orders her to halt. Fire engines tear down the street. Wanda dashes madly ahead. The cop tries to stop her. He falls across her handle-bars. They beat the engine, dash through a construction shanty, and he falls into a plaster vat, she onto a beam which is being raised into the air. The dinner whistle blows, and she has to struggle down as best she can. She slides on a hot bolt, tips over a bucket and a few other things, causing a vamp to get all splashed by plaster, so that the cop pinches said vamp instead. A young engineer asks her to go riding with him. Wanda cautiously takes her bike. The flivver shakes and finally stops near a roadhouse. The vamp is in a passing machine, with a deep-dyed villain. Meanwhile, Wanda steals away on her bike. The villain tells the engineer that his lady friend will drive him to a telephone. And the two go to the roadhouse. Avoiding a passing machine, Wanda dashes into the roadhouse. The villain accidentally starts the flivver, which backs into the cabaret - and into a big swimming pool. But it all ends romantically perfect when the engineer leaves the vamp flat, and drives out of the tank with Wanda.

Dir: Jess Robbins

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of The Decorator perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

Jimmy is an interior decorator at an artists house, and immediately causes damage to any art not nailed down.

Dir: Jess Robbins

A presentation of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" with variations that provoke mirth.

Dir: Jess Robbins

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of Tol'able Romeo perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

A fascinating piece of cinema that shares thematic elements.

Dir: Jess Robbins

Through sheer bluff Rodney Marvin ( Edward Everett Horton ) gets a job on a newspaper; becomes editor Matt Hayward's ( James Corrigan ) partner; and brings about a reconciliation between Hayward and his long time enemy, Mayor Gorham ( Lloyd Ingraham ).

Dir: Jess Robbins

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of Roaring Love Affair perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

A young man and a young woman run into each other at a train station after their respective dates stand them up.

Dir: Jess Robbins

A settlement worker interrupts a tramp in the act of acquiring a meal by the customary methods. She convinces him stealing is wrong and he carries the stolen things back. He escapes the wrath of the owner of the things, and is walking along when he discovered a table filled with food set across his path. He is about to help himself when a chair is placed for him. The profiteering landlord discovers him and gives him some money to evict the aged couple into the street. Seeing the landlord ill-treating the poor old lady, the tramp intercedes and triumphs over the landlord, who departs with the rent money that had been taken from his pockets. The settlement worker is attacked by a band of kidnappers who had been hired by the villain, when the tramp rescues her, quite accidentally, and she takes him home with her. Here he discovers that the landlord that he had the battle with is the girl's father, and who, much to his surprise, greets him cordially. But this attitude is short lived. Getting him alone, the father holds his victim by the throat as he endeavors to strike him in the face. He misses and drives his fist through a steel safe. The tramp feels sorry for him with all his missing and leads him to one of the marble pillars that support his mansion. He backs his victim against that but missing again, knocks the pillar loose, toppling the house about. The villain who had planned the kidnapping of the girl, seeking access to her room, is caught in the debris.

Dir: Jess Robbins

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of Too Much Business perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

Action gets under way with a duel between Colonel Amos Blackwell - the deadliest shot of his day - and Major Wimpett, the latter furnishing the cause for a combat which is to settle an argument as to whether a "full house or five aces" is the better hand. News of the duel is carried to the Colonel's family and to prevent the demise of the Major, the Colonel's son mounts a trusty high wheeled cycle and crashes into the field of battle in time to effect a cessation of hostilities - the bullet having hit the boy's watch when he appeared in the line of battle. Beholden, the Major presents him with his own "Waterbury." Time passes and in the meantime the boy - after bidding his sweetheart good-bye - reaches the cold, cruel city to build his fortune from a capital of ten cents. Hovering around a lunch counter where a customer is drinking a cup of coffee, the lone coin is accidentally dropped in the cup and disappears down the drinker's throat. Disheartened, the boy seeks a country road and meets a repulsed lover who is attempting suicide with a harmless gun. However, the gun suddenly goes off and hits a lamp globe which drops on the boy's head. He is taken to the home of an adventuress who tries to vamp him after linking up the "Waterbury" with a newspaper article which seeks to locate a missing heir to a fortune. The other suitor appears and at this point Lane displays a lot of his tricks in his endeavors to dodge his pursuer. The boy escapes the scheming pair and with his "Waterbury," returns to claim the fortune and his sweetheart.

Dir: Jess Robbins

Jimmy, arriving in the town, which is unable to keep a sheriff in office on account of the villainous doings of the villain, gang leader and his band, takes delight in beating up the villain, the latter attempts to kiss the girl against her will. She appeals to him to take the Sheriff's job and he does so. At first it appears as though he may join his predecessors, but the tide of battle turns in his favor; he beats up the villain; scares the gang out of town and settles down in earnest to his job. His plans to marry the heroine are frustrated, when she turns up with her husband-to-be-who proves to be no other than the previous gang-leader. Jimmy, unable face the happiness of the two, turns his sheriff's job over to the reformed gang-leader and leaves the town.

Dir: Jess Robbins

A fascinating piece of cinema that shares thematic elements.