The Second Hundred Years (a.k.a. The Second 100 Years) is a 1927 American silent comedy short film starring Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy prior to their official billing as the duo Laurel and Hardy. William K. Everson identifies this as the first “official” Laurel and Hardy film in which they are presented as a team. The team appeared in a… Read more →
Surrender is a 1927 American silent romantic drama film directed by Edward Sloman and written by Charles Kenyon, Edward J. Montagne and Albert DeMond. It is based on the 1915 play Lea Lyon by Alexander Brody. The film stars Mary Philbin, Ivan Mosjukine, Otto Matieson, Nigel De Brulier, Otto Fries, and Daniel Makarenko. The film was released on November 3,… Read more →
Dress Parade is a 1927 American silent romantic drama film produced by William Sistrom and Cecil B. DeMille and distributed by Pathé. The film stars William Boyd and Bessie Love, and was directed by Donald Crisp. Although it is based on a story by Major Robert Glassburn, Major Alexander Chilton, and Herbert David Walter, the plot is essentially the same… Read more →
Underworld (also released as Paying the Penalty) is a 1927 American silent gangster film directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring Clive Brook, Evelyn Brent and George Bancroft. The film launched Sternberg’s eight-year collaboration with Paramount Pictures, with whom he would produce his seven films with actress Marlene Dietrich. Journalist and screenwriter Ben Hecht won an Academy Award for Best… Read more →
East Side, West Side is a 1927 American drama film directed by Allan Dwan and starring George O’Brien (in the same year that he played the lead in F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans), Virginia Valli, and June Collyer. The supporting cast includes J. Farrell MacDonald and Holmes Herbert. The epic film was shot extensively on various locations… Read more →
The Jazz Singer is a 1927 American musical drama film directed by Alan Crosland and produced by Warner Bros. Pictures. It is the first feature-length motion picture with both synchronized recorded music score as well as lip-synchronous singing and speech (in several isolated sequences). Its release heralded the commercial ascendance of sound films and effectively marked the end of the… Read more →
Casey at the Bat is a 1927 American silent film, directed by Monte Brice, written by Ernest Thayer and based on the 1888 baseball poem of the same name. The picture stars Wallace Beery, Ford Sterling, ZaSu Pitts and Sterling Holloway in his film debut. Surviving period advertisements indicate Eddie Sutherland may have been slated as director before Brice. A… Read more →
The King of Kings is a 1927 American silent epic film produced and directed by Cecil B. DeMille. It depicts the last weeks of Jesus before his crucifixion and stars H. B. Warner in the lead role. Featuring the opening and resurrection scenes in two-color Technicolor, the film is the second in DeMille’s Biblical trilogy, preceded by The Ten Commandments… Read more →
Long Pants (also known as Johnny Newcomer) is a 1927 American silent comedy film directed by Frank Capra and starring Harry Langdon. Additional cast members include Gladys Brockwell, Alan Roscoe, and Priscilla Bonner. Film historian David Kalat reports that Buster Keaton, a long-time fan of Langdon’s known for his own morbid jokes about death and killings, criticized a scene in… Read more →
Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a 1927 American synchronized sound drama film directed by Harry A. Pollard and released by Universal Pictures. While the film has no audible dialog, it was released with a synchronized musical score with sound effects using the Western Electric sound-on-film process. The film is based on the 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe… Read more →
