Movies: Vitagraph Company Of America

Although not the first feature-length animated film, as is sometimes thought, it was the first cartoon to feature a character with an appealing personality. The appearance of a true character distinguished it from earlier animated "trick films", such...

Young Irish physician Peter Blood is exiled as a slave to Barbados, where he and his friend Jeremy are purchased by Colonel Bishop at the behest of his niece Arabella. With other slaves he captures a Spanish galleon and becomes the terror of the Cari...

Anna Sewell's "autobiography" of a horse named Black Beauty is here expanded to include the adventures of the humans who surround the horse....

The Craigs and Smiths, next-door neighbors, are the best of friends until Smith builds a chicken house. Their two gardens are connected and their children fraternize as if all belonged to one large family. Sidney Craig manages to set loose Smith's ch...

When sawmill owner Helen Cole is kidnapped by bandits, it falls on lumberjack Dan Stevens to rescue her, but "Wirenail" Hedges is not willing to give up without a fight. Originally a fifteen-episode serial, all that is known to survive of "Smashing B...

During Nick Austin's imprisonment, his wife passes away. Before she dies, she writes a note to her husband, asking him to put her little girl in the care of an orphan asylum. Mrs. Downes, while bringing some of her dead daughter's clothes to the asyl...

Cartoon figures announce, via comic strip balloons, that they will move - and move they do, in a wildly exaggerated style. Also known as "Winsor McCay, the Famous Cartoonist of the N.Y. Herald and His Moving Comics"....

A widower becomes infatuated with his daughter's governess, to the displeasure of the child and her nurse....

Lillian Travers, a New York heiress, pops down to Florida to surprise her fiancé, Fred Cassadene, the house doctor at a prominent Saint Augustine hotel. The surprise, however, is Lillian's when she finds Fred in a series of compromising situations wi...

The Roman setting provides ample opportunity for a very high concentration of gag titles, many of which are quite witty and many of which are quaint for deriving their humor from the juxtaposition of having ancient Romans use a lot of hip 1918-era sl...

Mr. & Mrs. Sidney Drew starred in a series of polite situational comedies, first for Vitagraph and then for their own company, releasing through Metro. Mr. Drew -- uncle of John, Lionel and Ethel Barrymore -- died after his son was killed in the ...

Robert Bardon has searched for years for animal trainer Gamo who seduced and abandoned Brandon's daughter Gladys. Finding him at last he corners him in a room and exacts his revenge....

In the gray dawn of an October day, as the inhabitants of a village street in Tripoli are engaged in the enjoyment of their several pursuits of life, an Arab rushes upon the peaceful scene, announcing that Italy has declared war against Turkey and th...

A harried propman backstage at a theater must put up with malfunctioning wind machines, roosters that spit nitroglycerine, and a gang planning to rob the theater's payroll....

A cartoonist draws faces and figures on a blackboard - and they come to life....

Larry in school and always gets in trouble until he falls asleep and dreams of when he's all grown up....

Vitagraph production of Shakespeare's Richard III....

Back in college, John Ballard saved Philip Hardin's life. Twenty years later, John is the district attorney and Philip is president of a railroad notorious for its accident record. When John brings a suit against the railroad, Philip threatens to rev...

A repairman falls in love with a blacksmith's daughter, who's having trouble with their greedy landlord, and helps them get one over on him....

A traveler stays the night at a rural inn, but gets no rest as he is tormented by various spectres and mysterious happenings....