Top-Tier Alternatives In the Shadow of The Cowboy Millionaire: Cult...

Dir: Maurice Campbell

Carver Endicott, a young sophisticate, is rejected by his fiancée for being too foppish and dull. When she feigns an interest in his father, Carver attempts to disgrace his family name by working as a farmhand and later as a busboy in a hotel. However, the newspapers only praise him for his self-sacrificing principles; and finding that he cannot bring shame to the family through menial labor, he takes up with a notorious actress. But when this maneuver also fails, he returns to his former fiancée, who has no further complaint about his being an inexperienced dullard.

Dir: Edward F. Cline

Heretofore running a shoe store has been considered a quiet, respectable business, but Ben and his partner make the interior of their emporium of fashionable footwear look like the finish to a feature number at a smart cabaret. They also put new life and the joy of winning into a gambling joint, until they are discovered cheating. This so shocks the proprietor and his regular customers that they lose their faith in human nature and send for the police. And so the merry game is kept up.

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of Cupid's Day Off perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

Dir: Richard Smith

Two female candidates for Chief of Police live across the hall from each other, and their political rivalry follows them home, leading to plenty of hi-jinks.

Dir: Charley Chase

A young married couple volunteer to take charge of several orphans after the asylum has burned down. Of course they find their hands full with their troublesome charges.

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

Dir: Reggie Morris

A fascinating piece of cinema that shares thematic elements.

Dir: Lloyd Ingraham

While walking along the street one day, Arthur P. Hampton, an impoverished young doctor, and his chums, Stub Masters and Johnny Stokes, are persuaded to part with their last remaining funds by tag day solicitor Mary Jane Smith, with whom the doctor promptly falls in love. Doc's friends then hit upon a get-rich-quick scheme. Knowing that his Uncle George has promised a large sum of money upon his nephew's marriage, they persuade Doc to send out fake wedding invitations naming Mary Jane as the blushing bride. Uncle George, elated at the good news, writes to Mary Jane's aunt, Angelica Burns, an old sweetheart, to invite Mary Jane and Angelica to be his guests on an ocean voyage. Meanwhile, Mary Jane pays a visit to the doctor's office and, upon seeing the wedding invitations, becomes so flustered that she trips and sprains her ankle. Doc comes to her rescue and then begs her to pose as his wife. She agrees, but at ship-side, Stub and Johnnie confess all to Uncle George, who flies into a rage until Doc announces that he and Mary Jane have chosen a wedding at sea.

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

Dir: Edward F. Cline

When a hotel orchestra leader starts to flirt with a girl in the audience, her fiancé is very displeased. Then the orchestra leader finds out that the hotel flower girl is really a rich heiress, and he shifts his attentions to her. Now the flower girl's boyfriend is unhappy, and soon there are even more complications.

Dir: Edward F. Cline

Two inventive farmhands compete for the hand of the same girl.

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

Dir: Edward F. Cline

It's all there - the deserted mother with her child in her arms, followed all around by a fiendish wicked snow storm, the heroine lashed to the rails by the scoundrelly villain, the young woman fastened to the buzz saw of a lumber mill and about to be reduced to mincemeat. And hist. The wicked villain with a mustache and cigarette - the noble hero and the persecuted heroine. There are two drunks sitting in one of the boxes of the theater, who get so excited that they insist upon helping out the action of the melodrama. In the middle of the play, the head scene shifter gets jealous of his wife, who is the leading woman of the show, and drags her from the stage. Nothing, if not resourceful, Ben rushes down into the audience and kidnaps a beautiful young woman to play the leading woman's role. Then comes a startling climax, when the snow storm is shut down by a queer accident. And an equally tragic catastrophe jazzes up the ocean when a storm and a submarine play at cross purposes.

Dir: Edward F. Cline

A fascinating piece of cinema that shares thematic elements.