M’LISS – Mary Pickford, Thomas Meighan

M’Liss (1918)
Direction: Marshall Neilan
Screenplay: Frances Marion; from Bret Harte’s story
Cast: Mary Pickford, Thomas Meighan, Theodore Roberts, Tully Marshall, Charles Ogle, Monte Blue, Winifred Greenwood
 

Mary Pickford, Thomas Meighan in M’Liss
 

Directed by Marshall Neilan and written by Frances Marion – two frequent Mary Pickford collaborators — M’Liss is one of Pickford’s very best films. In this comedy-drama, Pickford plays a spirited and unruly mountain girl, that’s the M’Liss of the title, who falls in love with the new schoolteacher (Thomas Meighan) — who is later falsely accused of murder.
Pickford, by then already a superstar, gives a sterling performance; she is ably supported by (future star) Thomas Meighan as the schoolteacher, as well as a fine collection of character actors including [...]

Cinesation 2009

Mary Pickford, Thomas Meighan in M’Liss

Cinesation 2009 is currently taking place at the Lincoln Theater in Massilion, Ohio. The four-day festival, which ends on Sunday, will screen a number of hard-to-find titles, including:

James Cruze’s 1925 political-historical Western The Pony Express, starring Betty Compson, Ricardo Cortez, Wallace Beery, and George Bancroft in a tale of powerlust and media manipulation. Hey, sounds like life in the early 21st century? Well, that’s a mere coincidence, as The Pony Express is set in mid-19th-century California, a time when Sen. Glen (Al Hart) and his Knights of the Golden Circle scheme to have the state secede from Union, annex another chunk of Mexico, and form a new empire.
The 1918 Mary Pickford vehicle M’Liss, in [...]

Thomas Meighan, THE LOST SQUADRON at the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum

Via Thomas Gladysz’s article in the Los Angeles Examiner:
The Edison Theatre at the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum in the Northern California town of Fremont has been screening silent films and early talkies for quite some time. As Gladysz explains in his article, that area was home to the western studios of the Chicago-based Essanay film company, among whose stars at one point were Gloria Swanson; Charles Chaplin; matinee idol Francis X. Bushman (best remembered for his villain in the 1925 version of Ben-Hur); and company co-owner Gilbert M. "Broncho Billy" Anderson (the "ay" in Essanay; the "ess" was George K. Spoor), the first cowboy star.
The Niles Essanay Museum’s line-up for the rest of April [...]

Best Films – 1920

Though no masterpiece, The Mollycoddle is a surprisingly enjoyable romp starring Douglas Fairbanks as an effete, upper-class nonentity who discovers both his manhood and his red-white-and-blue Americanness before the final fadeout. His leading lady is a minor actress named Ruth Renick, but one barely notices her. The director is Victor Fleming, best known for Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, but The Mollycoddle is truly all Fairbanks’.
 
FILM
The Last of the Mohicans
d: Maurice Tourneur, Clarence Brown; scr: Robert Dillon
The Mollycoddle
d: Victor Fleming; scr: Douglas Fairbanks, Thomas J. Geraghty
What Happened to Rosa?
d: Victor Schertzinger; scr: Gerald C. Duffy
 
CHECK THESE OUT
Conrad in Quest of His Youth
d: William C. de Mille; scr: Olga Printzlau
Outside the Law
d: Tod Browning; scr: Lucien Hubbard; [...]

Best Films – 1919

Lillian Gish, Richard Barthelmess in Broken Blossoms
FILM
Broken Blossoms
d, scr: D. W. Griffith
Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari / The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
d: Robert Wiene; scr: Carl Mayer, Hans Janowitz
The Hoodlum
d: Sidney Franklin; scr: Frances Marion
 
CHECK THESE OUT
The False Faces
d, scr: Irvin Willat
The Sentimental Bloke
d: Raymond Longford; scr: Raymond Longford and (possibly) Lottie Lyell
 
ACTOR
Richard Barthelmess
Broken Blossoms
Werner Krauss
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Thomas Meighan
Male and Female
Arthur Tauchert
The Sentimental Bloke
 
ACTRESS
Lillian Gish
Broken Blossoms
Lillian Gish
The Greatest Question
Mary Johnson
Herr Arnes pengar / Sir Arne’s Treasure
Mary Pickford
Heart o’ the Hills
Mary Pickford
The Hoodlum
Gloria Swanson
Male and Female
 
SUPPORTING ACTOR
Lon Chaney
Victory
Conrad Veidt
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
 
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Josephine Crowell
The Greatest Question
Lila Lee
Male and Female
Clarine Seymour
The Girl Who Stayed at Home
 
CINEMATOGRAPHY
G. W. Bitzer
Broken Blossoms
G. W. Bitzer
The Greatest Question
René [...]