The King of Kings is the Greatest Story Ever Told as only Cecil B. DeMille could tell it. In 1927, working with one of the biggest budgets in Hollywood history, DeMille spun the life and Passion of Christ into a silent-era blockbuster. Featuring text drawn directly from the Bible, a cast of thousands, and the great showman’s singular cinematic bag of tricks, The King of Kings is at once spectacular and deeply reverent—part Gospel, part Technicolor epic.
Our heroine, Miss Velez (despite the fact that she seems to be just along for the ride) is much her usual over-eloquent self (how fortunate she has no sound track!), while Warner Oland makes such an impressive and villainously seedy bandit, he needs no sound track at all. We can just imagine his oily, purring accents all too well.
Based on a true story, two-timing boozing wife Roxie Hart kills her lover in cold blood after he leaves her, and finagles her way out being indicted. The basis for Kander/Ebb's 1975 Broadway musical of the same name and its Oscar-winning 2002 film adaptation.
Pete Smith, a lift bridge operator in a harbor, feels lonely in his cabin, his only visitor being a policeman on patrol, Sgt. Coughlin. One night, after hearing shots, Smith gives shelter to a wounded man, whom he hides from Coughlin. Before leaving, the man, Marcas, promises to return the favor and the coat he borrows from him. Later, Smith enters the police, and his chief, Mather, suspects he is protecting Marcas, who is actually a gangster. Marcas sends a girl, Mary Monks, to deliver a luxurious coat with a fur collar to Smith. Pete and Mary get along well, and for his sake, she betrays Marcas, who is eventually shot to death by the cops, after having stopped his mob from killing Smith. Mary goes away alone into the night, and when Mather finds out that Pete is protecting her, he drops away the evidence of her presence on the spot.
A young man from Argentina goes to Yale where he plays football and falls in love with a professor's beautiful daughter.
A Harp in Hock, also known as The Samaritan, is a lost 1927 American silent melodrama film directed by Renaud Hoffman, produced by DeMille Pictures, and distributed by Pathé Exchange. The film starred Rudolph Schildkraut, Junior Coghlan, May Robson, and Bessie Love, and was based on the short story by Evelyn Campbell.
When the Stack family suffers some financial setbacks, daughter Mary Ellen suggests they buy a car and relocate to California. Unbeknownst to them, their used car is worth more than they ever could have imagined.
Jazz age youngster Smoke Thatcher "borrows" a neighbor's car to take Patsy, his sweetheart, to a dance after his father refuses to lend him his car. A car-fight with a rival results in the borrowed automobile's being so wrecked that Smoke cannot return it. The garage to which he and Patsy take the car for repair turns out to be actually a gang's hideaway and a place where stolen cars are brought and later fenced.
The heir to a family business travels to Paris to try to stop his youth-obsessed mother from squandering the family fortune with her new husband, who's married her for her money. After he returns from service in World War I, he finds his mother, now broke and abandoned by her gigolo husband....
John Blaisdell, a stolid businessman married for 10 years, concludes that romantic love is a thing of the past for him. His wife, Helen, a very domestic and conservative woman, invites Jenny Lou, a young southern girl, as her houseguest, and the girl flirts with John; she is conspicuously unsuccessful until she pretends to faint on the golf course and the unsuspecting victim finds her in his arms.
Percy Ashfield is to marry Mary Bowman but her father objects. He objects because while the Bowmans and Percy and others with vested interest are all assembled in Ashfield's castle admiring the pearls that are to be Mary's wedding present, a girl rushes in carrying a baby and claiming the Percy is the baby's father, and her claims are supported by a doctor who follows her in adding that the girl is mentally deranged over Percy's faithfulness.
A domineering mother sets out to break up the romance and possible marriage of her daughter, Cecily Stoughton, with Ted Pyncheon by several contrived devices and bringing in other candidates more to her liking.
During World War I, an American soldier is captured and taken prisoner by the Germans. However, instead of being placed in a prisoner-of-war camp, he is assigned to the small farm of a young woman and her son to help raise crops to help feed the German army and people.
Barbara Fiske, a beautiful girl of social standing, is about to be married to Lloyd Van Courtland. On the eve of their marriage, she foolishly pays a visit to a colorful steamship captain aboard his ship.
The exploits of Brigadier Gerard who helps expose Foreign Minister Talleyrand as a traitor to Napoleon.
Sunny sings in the streets to obtain funds for a country outing. A theatre owner hears her and takes her up. During a fishing trip Sunny is about to accept the theatre owner's proposal of marriage when his estranged wife turns up...
Joe, a weakling gangster, and Bob, an ex-gambler, compete for Lyla Mason, a working girl who also runs a 10th Avenue rooming house in New York city. Bob's desire to show Lyla he can support her leads him back to the gambling table when past-due rent threatens her with eviction. Bob and Joe are both suspected when Fink, a bootlegger, is found murdered in his room.
A stormy marriage of 6 months between Narcissa and Peter Williams ends in a bitter quarrel, and to gain his freedom Peter offers her more alimony than he can afford. Then he meets Mary Martin, who restores his faith in marriage. With business reverses, Peter falls behind in his alimony payments and neglects his new wife. Narcissa, however, manages to support Bertie Waring, a young sofa-hound; but she protests the delayed alimony and Mary is forced to take a job with an interior decorating establishment. Peter goes to Narcissa to appeal to her generosity, at the moment when Mary (unaware of Narcissa's identity as her husband's first wife) is working in Narcissa's apartment; seeing them together, Mary leaves in humiliation and accepts an invitation from Bertie....
Marguerite, the beauty of an Austrian village, loves the poverty-stricken Baron Erich von Statzen, although her mother is opposed to the affair, having been made suspicious by the hunchback Ludwig, who is smitten by Marguerite's charms and insanely jealous of Statzen. Statzen's uncle would have him marry Helena Boursch, the local brewer's daughter, to save his dwindling estate. Ordered to the front when war is declared, Statzen is forced to leave without saying goodby to Marguerite.
Peter Olsen, a young social outcast who lives alone on a rundown farm and raises vegetables for a living, finds his only consolation in liquor, though Dorcas Chatham, daughter of the general store owner, begs him to forego this indulgence. Returning from town, he finds a dog by the roadside, apparently injured by a car, and takes it home. Later, on a drunken spree, Peter is attacked by robbers, but the dog comes to his rescue and frightens the assailants away. Stirred by the unselfish devotion of his dog, Peter gradually regains his self-respect, and Dorcas falls in love with him and accepts his proposal, though she fears the dog. When Peter enters the dog in a show, another exhibitor proves to be its owner, and Peter is first parted from, then reunited with, "his" dog. Dorcas overcomes her fear and is united with Peter.
