King Baggot
Actor · 1879 – 1948 · Saint Louis, Missouri, USA
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia William King Baggot (November 7, 1879 – July 11, 1948) was an American actor, film director and screenwriter. He was an internationally famous movie star of the silent film era. The first individually publicized leading man in America, Baggot was referred to as "King of the Movies", "The Most Photographed Man in the World", and "The Man Whose Face Is As Familiar As The Man In The Moon". Baggot appeared in over 300 motion pictures from 1909 to 1947, wrote 18 screenplays, and directed 45 movies from 1912 to 1928, including The Lie (1912), Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman (1925), and The House of Scandal (1928). He also directed William S. Hart in his most famous western, Tumbleweeds (1925). Among his film appearances, Baggot was best known for The Scarlet Letter (1911), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1913), and Ivanhoe (1913). Baggot began his career on the stage, in a Shakespearean stock company, and toured throughout the U.S. While acting in stock in St. Louis in 1909, he was cast as supporting player in the Schubert touring production of The Wishing Ring. When The Wishing Ring closed in Chicago, Baggot returned to New York to join another company. Upon a chance meeting with Harry Solter, who was directing movies for Carl Laemmle at Independent Moving Pictures Company (IMP), he was persuaded to go with Solter to the studio. Baggot became interested in the fledgling industry and decided to turn picture player. His first film was the romance short The Awakening of Bess (1909) opposite Florence Lawrence. It was directed by Harry Solter, her husband, at IMP in Fort Lee, New Jersey. At a time when screen actors worked anonymously, Baggot and Lawrence became the first "movie stars" to be given billing, a marquee, and promotion in advertising. Baggot starred in at least 42 movies opposite Lawrence from 1909 to 1911. In the latter year, he starred in at least 16 movies with Mary Pickford. He also began writing screenplays and directing, all the while becoming a major star internationally. When he appeared "in person" at theatres he was mobbed at stage doors. By 1912, he was so famous that when he took the leading part in forming the prestigious Screen Club in New York, the first organization of its kind strictly for movie people, he was the natural choice for its first president. King Baggot died in Los Angeles, California in 1948, age 68. For his contributions to the film industry, Baggot received a motion pictures star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960. His star is located at 6312 Hollywood Boulevard.
Movies24
Movie7.5ComedyRomanceWhen a rich woman's ex-husband and a tabloid-type reporter turn up just before her planned remarriage, she begins to learn the truth about herself.
The Philadelphia Story
1940 · 1K votes
Movie7.1DramaRomanceA married woman and a drifter fall in love, then plot to murder her husband.
The Postman Always Rings Twice
1946 · 389 votes
Movie7.4ComedyMusicThe Marx Brothers take on high society and the opera world to bring two lovers together. A sly business manager and two wacky friends of two opera singers help them achieve success while humiliating their stuffy and snobbish enemies.
A Night at the Opera
1935 · 573 votes
Movie6.2DramaThat Mothers Might Live is a 1938 American short drama film directed by Fred Zinnemann. The short is a brief account of Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis and his discovery of the need for cleanliness in 19th-century maternity wards, thereby significantly decreasing maternal mortality, and of his struggle to gain acceptance of his idea. Although Semmelweis ultimately failed in his lifetime, later scientific luminaries advanced his work in spirit like microbiologist Louis Pasteur, who provided a scientific theoretical explanation of Semmelweis' observations by helping develop the germ theory of disease and the British surgeon, Dr. Joseph Lister who revolutionized medicine putting Pasteur's research to practical use. In 1939, at the 11th Academy Awards, the film won an Oscar for Best Short Subject (One-Reel).
That Mothers Might Live
1938 · 12 votes
Movie6.6DramaMusicDiscovery by Flo Ziegfeld changes a girl's life but not necessarily for the better, as three beautiful women find out when they join the spectacle on Broadway: Susan, the singer who must leave behind her ageing vaudevillian father; vulnerable Sheila, the working girl pursued both by a millionaire and by her loyal boyfriend from Flatbush; and the mysterious European beauty Sandra, whose concert violinist husband cannot endure the thought of their escaping from poverty by promenading her glamor in skimpy costumes.
Ziegfeld Girl
1941 · 39 votes
Movie6.0ComedyMusicDoc and Wishey run into some Nazi-agents, who want to smuggle bombs into the USA from a Mexican border hotel.
Rio Rita
1942 · 19 votes
Movie6.8DramaDevout but iron-willed Father Flanagan leads a community called Boys Town, a different sort of juvenile detention facility where, instead of being treated as underage criminals, the boys are shepherded into making themselves better people. But hard-nosed petty thief and pool shark Whitey Marsh, the impulsive and violent younger brother of an imprisoned murderer, might be too much for the good father's tough-love system.
Boys Town
1938 · 109 votes
Movie6.3ComedyMusicA detective is hired to protect the life of a singer, who has recently inherited a department store, from the store's crooked manager.
The Big Store
1941 · 77 votes
Movie6.4WesternDramaFast-talking con-man and grifter Candy Johnson rises to be the corrupt boss of Yellow Creek, but his wife's alcoholic father tries to set things right.
Honky Tonk
1941 · 18 votes
Movie6.6DramaHistoryThe young Austrian princess Marie Antoinette is arranged to marry Louis XVI, future king of France, in a politically advantageous marriage for the rival countries. The opulent Marie indulges in various whims and flirtations. When Louis XV passes and Louis XVI ascends the French throne, his queen's extravagant lifestyle earns the hatred of the French people, who despise her Austrian heritage.
Marie Antoinette
1938 · 37 votes
Movie6.6DramaRomanceA beautiful singer and a battling priest try to reform a Barbary Coast saloon owner in the days before the great earthquake and subsequent fires in 1906.
San Francisco
1936 · 89 votes
Movie5.8ComedyWhen two bumbling barbers act as agents for a talented but unknown singer, they stage a phony murder in order to get him a plum role.
Bud Abbott and Lou Costello in Hollywood
1945 · 30 votes
Movie6.8ComedyRomanceSeeking US citizenship, a Viennese refugee arranges a marriage of convenience with a struggling writer.
Come Live with Me
1941 · 36 votes
Movie5.7MysteryThrillerIn Chicago, an unemployed actor aims to solve the mystery concerning a string of ax murders, apparently committed by a lunatic.
Fingers at the Window
1942 · 18 votes
Movie6.0ComedyRomanceComedy about a bandleader with hypnotic powers.
Swing Fever
1943 · 4 votes
- Movie
A lost film. Dr. Crawford and his wife with their little daughter, Elsie, are at home amusing themselves with the Scotch collie puppy, Imp, when another doctor is announced and he is shown an article in a newspaper which describes the providential rescue from drowning of the doctor's child by Lassie, the mother of Imp. Two more physician's arrive and announce that they have come to try an experiment with a newly discovered anesthetic. Dr. Crawford has a guinea pig, on which the experiment is to be tried, but it is discovered the animal has died, and the men of medicine are in a quandary. It is finally decided to use Imp, the puppy, for the experiment, despite the mild protest of Elsie.
Science
1911
Movie4.9DramaHistorySpies on opposite sides fall in love in pre-revolutionary Russia.
The Emperor's Candlesticks
1937 · 9 votes
Movie9.0DocumentaryTV MovieAmong the pieces featured in Fragments are the final reel of John Ford's The Village Blacksmith (1922) and a glimpse at Emil Jannings in The Way of All Flesh (1927), the only Oscar®-winning performance in a lost film. Fragments also features clips from such lost films as Cleopatra (1917), starring Theda Bara; The Miracle Man (1919), with Lon Chaney; He Comes Up Smiling (1918), starring Douglas Fairbanks; an early lost sound film, Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929), filmed in early Technicolor, and the only color footage of silent star Clara Bow, Red Hair (1928). The program is rounded out with interviews of film preservationists involved in identifying and restoring these films. Also featured is a new interview with Diana Serra Cary, best known as "Baby Peggy", one of the major American child stars of the silent era, who discusses one of the featured fragments, Darling of New York (1923).
Fragments: Surviving Pieces of Lost Films
2011 · 1 votes
Movie6.0ComedyAdventureWhile in Shanghai reporting on the Sino-Japanese war, Chris Hunter, a shrewd news reporter, meets pilot Alma Harding. She does not trust him, but he manages to hire her as his assistant. During an adventurous expedition through the jungles of South America, her opinion of him begins to change.
Too Hot to Handle
1938 · 21 votes
Movie5.7DramaA popular jockey is disbarred from racing after he's accused of throwing a race.
Sweepstakes
1931 · 3 votes
Movie5.7RomanceComedyComic mayhem results when a small town pet store owner, mistakenly believed killed during a sea voyage, turns up very much alive.
The Ghost Comes Home
1940 · 3 votes
Movie6.8HorrorScience FictionRespected Parisian banker Paul Lavond is framed for robbery and murder by crooked associates and sent to prison. Years later, he escapes with a friend, a scientist who was working on a method to reduce humans to a height of mere inches (all for the good of humanity, of course). Lavond, however, is consumed with hatred for those who betrayed him, and takes the scientist's methods back to Paris to exact painful revenge.
The Devil-Doll
1936 · 124 votes
Movie4.6DramaHistoryIrish politician Charles Stewart Parnell struggles to free his country from English rule, but his relationship with married Katie O'Shea threatens to ruin all his dreams of freedom.
Parnell
1937 · 9 votes
Movie5.8RomanceCrimeA law student poses as a fight promoter to catch a notorious gangster.
Sworn Enemy
1936 · 4 votes