Hawthorne of the U.S.A. (Silent)

While on vacation in Monte Carlo, legal clerk Anthony Hamilton Hawthorne hits the jackpot. The newly financially secure desk jockey then takes a celebratory joyride through the nearby tiny country of Bovinia. When his cap is blown off his head, it is retrieved by a strikingly beautiful young woman in a pristine white gown. Hawthorne has no idea that this is Princess Irma of Bovinia. Deciding to stick around so he can romance the girl, the naive American falls in with some Bolshevik insurgents, who convince him to finance their revolution with his newfound fortune. When Hawthrone learns that his new friends plan on assassinating Princess Irma, he's forced to become a hero for once in his life and squelch the Bolshie uprising.

Hawthorne of the U.S.A. is one of the few surviving features starring matinee idol Wallace Reid. The actor shot to stardom after appearing in D.W. Griffith's classics The Birth of a Nation (1915) andIntolerance (1916). But "Wally"'s true success came from starring in action-packed films with liberal dashes of comedy, similar to the ones Douglas Fairbanks was making with Anita Loos and John Emerson (in fact, Fairbanks had starred in the original stage production of Hawthorne of the U.S.A on Broadway in 1912.) A few months before Hawthorne was filmed, Reid was badly injured in a train wreck. With his contract to Paramount considered top priority, doctors prescribed the actor morphine so he could continue to work at his usual breakneck pace. Tragically, he became hopelessly addicted to the drug, and with no rehabilitation programs available at the time, Wallace Reid died in 1923 at the age of 31. Director James Cruze would go on to make classics such as The Covered Wagon (1923), The Great Gabbo (1929) and I Cover the Waterfront (1933).

BONUS: Mystery of the Double Cross - The Lady in Number "7" - Chapter 1 (1917): The trials and tribulations of a beautiful girl whose mysterious tattoo has marked her for death at the hands of a secret cabal of European assassins. "The Lady in Number "7" is the rare first installment of this classic 15 chapter serial.

• silent