Hoodoo Ann (Silent)

D.W. Griffith presents this heartwarming rags-to-riches tale, which was a box-office hit in 1916. A girl abandoned by her parents at an orphanage is given the nickname "Hoodoo Ann" due to her consistently accident-prone behavior. Her luck changes when she rescues a child from a burning building. Now a celebrity, Ann is adopted by Samuel and Elinor Knapp, a wealthy couple. Thrilled by her change in fortunes, Ann celebrates with a night out at the movies. Later at home, she emulates the cowboy actor she saw on the big screen by playing with her adopted father's gun. But at that moment, a shot rings out, killing her next door neighbor! Now Ann is on trial for the man's murder, and suspects that her old bad luck has played its last trick on her...

As he was busy prepping his epic Intolerance (1916), D.W. Griffith passed the director's chair on his pet project Hoodoo Ann to journeyman filmmaker Lloyd Ingraham. The Hollywood legend wrote the screenplay (using the pseudonym Granville Warwick) and supervised the film's production. Thus, many Griffith-esque touches appear in the final product. Mae Marsh and Robert Harron were two of the most recognizable faces in Griffith's stock company, and he would feature them together in one of Intolerance's famous sequences. The "movie-within-a-movie" parodies the work of Western star William S. Hart. Elmo Lincoln, the screen's first Tarzan, plays a police officer.

• silent