John Halliday

When 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.

A concert violinist becomes charmed with his daughter's talented piano teacher. When he invites her to go on tour with him, they make beautiful music away from the concert hall as well. He soon leaves his wife so the two can go off together.

"The Terror", a killer whose identity is unknown, occupies an English country house that has been converted into an inn.

Jeffrey and Glenda are two lovers about to embark on a three-day cruise to nowhere. Their plan is to be married on board by the ship's captain. As Glenda is packing to leave, she receives a threatening phone call from her obsessed, former lover Leo. Glenda confronts Leo and tells him that it's over. Leo, a high-powered attorney calls a hit man to have Jeffrey eliminated. Glenda knocks Leo over the head before he can give the hit man a name. Leo is dead. Glenda sneaks back into her apartment, goes off on the cruise with Jeffrey and pretends that all is swell. Leo's partner, Stephen Bessemer, suspects Glenda and follows her to the ship. Bessemer stages a mock trial aboard the ship and cleverly draws a confession from Glenda. Jeffrey, also an attorney, represents Glenda when she is arrested upon arriving on shore. A skeptical district attorney, and the fact that Jeffrey horsewhips the star witness (the hit man), combine to get Glenda completely off the hook.

A beautiful chorine marries a handsome rich socialite, but her idyllic life ends when she visits a dying old beau and is charged when he commits suicide.

Lydia MacMillan, a wealthy woman who has never married, invites several men her own age to her home to reminisce about the times when they were young and courted her. In memory, each romance seemed splendid and destined for happiness, but in each case, Lydia realizes, the truth was less romantic, and ill-starred.

When a young South Seas sailor falls overboard, the beautiful daughter of a Polynesian king dives in and saves his life. Thus begins the romance of Johnny and Luana. Though Luana is promised to another man, Johnny whisks her away, and for a brief time the lovers live very happily together. But, when a local volcano threatens their lives, Luana knows that she must sacrifice herself to the volcanic gods in order to save her island.

When his mother dies, young Peter Ibbetson leaves Paris and his best friend, Mary, behind to live with a severe uncle in England. Years later, Peter is an architect with little time for women, until he begins a project with the Duke and Duchess of Towers. When Peter and the duchess become great friends, she reveals that she is Mary — but the duke soon suspects his wife of infidelity and challenges Peter to a duel, threatening the pair's second chance.

As a luxurious ocean liner makes its way across the Atlantic Ocean, the audience is made privy to the travails of several of its passengers. Edmund Lowe heads the cast as Monty Greer, a suave gambler who falls in love with Judy, the daughter of immigrant lens grinder Rudolph Kramer. In trying to recover some valuable securities stolen from banker Henry Graham, Greer finds himself in the middle of a fierce gun battle in the ship's engine room. Meanwhile, Graham, who has been cheating on his wife Kay with sexy dancer Sigrid Carline, is murdered by person or persons unknown.

Madeleine steals a string of pearls in Paris and uses American engineer Tom, who is driving on his vacation to Spain, to get the pearls out of France. But getting the pearls back from him proves to be difficult without falling in love.

An ocean liner is found at sea with everyone on board dead. An investigation is begun to find out what happened.

A woman and a man vying for a woman's affection: the usual love trio? Not quite so since the belle in question is Lorraine de Grissac, a very wealthy and alluring society woman, while one of the two rivals is none other than Arsène Lupin, the notorious jewel thief everybody thought dead, now living under the assumed name of René Farrand. As for the other suitor he is an American, a former F.B.I. sleuth turned private eye by the name of Steve Emerson. Steve not only suspects Farrand of being Lupin but when someone attempts to steal a precious emerald necklace from Lorraine's uncle, Count de Brissac, he is persuaded Lupin is the culprit. Is Emerson right or wrong? Which of the two men will win over Lorraine's heart?

A girl from the wrong side of the tracks is torn between true love and a life of sin.

A simple peasant is forced to take up arms to defend his farm during the Spanish Civil War. Along the way he falls in love with a Russian girl whose father is involved in espionage.

Society heiress Joan Bradford rebels against her mother's choice of a future husband by masquerading as a working class girl and dating a window washer.

After a tumultuous first marriage, Millie Blake learns to love her newfound independence and drags her feet on the possibility of remarriage. The years pass, and now Millie's daughter garners the attentions of men - men who once devoted their time to her mother.

A man meets the daughter of his lover and they begin to fall in love.

College co-eds struggle with the moral, societal and human aspects of romance.

A sportswriter jilted by his globe-trotting girlfriend marries a woman jilted by her boyfriend.

A maid's dream comes true but are not quite what she expected.

A society man's loving, devoted wife, upon learning that he has been unfaithful and is planning to leave her for the other woman, strategically pretends to be having an affair of her own. The woman's friends gladly assist in the deception.

Nora Mason becomes entangled in a family mix-up of murder and scandal that threatens to ruin her career and entire future; Unless the mother she does not know can find a way to save her.

Nan Reynolds encourages her copywriter husband Bill to open his own agency. Nearly out of business, he finally gets a client. Former girlfriend Patricia Berkeley writes a very successful commercial for the client and neats up their old romance. Wife and girlfriend struggle over Bill.

In this sudsy hospital melodrama, a married nurse finds herself falling in love with one of two surgeons when her husband goes mad and needs an operation. One of the surgeon's regards his pursuit a lark, while the other harbors genuine affections for the nurse.

A gambler falls for a fake countess.

In this drama, a 50-year-old married man (played by John Halliday) goes with his wife (Belle Bennett) and son (Junior Durkin) to a nightclub in a fancy hotel in Detroit. He meets a gold-digger (Dorothy Burgess) there, singing the theme song of the picture, and eventually ends up going out with her on a subsequent occasion and falls in love with her. His wife finally finds out and this leads to her leaving him and getting a divorce in Paris. He is married to the gold-digger but finds life with her and her "jazz friends" to be too much for him. He begins to long for his old wife when he finds her in a nightclub with another man and becomes jealous.

Guests at a women's residence club help a jilted small-town girl turn to modelling.

A young couple decide to marry under the condition that they agree never to disagree. That agreement is soon put to the test when the husband finds himself attracted to a beautiful young woman.

A French military officer is convicted of treason and sent to Devil's Island. His wife takes it upon herself to obtain the stolen document and prove his innocence.

A temperamental movie star storms off the set of her latest picture in order to carry on a fling with an ambitious, publicity-hungry prizefighter.

Jack Brookfield, a gambler with clairvoyant and hypnotic powers, is able to win at cards through his unique gift. But when he inadvertently hypnotizes young Clay Thorne, Thorne kills an enemy of Brookfield's while under a trance. No one believes Brookfield's protestations that Thorne is innocent of any murderous intent, so Brookfield teams up with retired lawyer Martin Prentice in hopes of saving the young man from the gallows.

An ordinary man is confronted by gangsters who have reason to believe a treasure is buried somewhere on his property.

On her debut as an opera star, Marion Stuart is interrogated and possibly implicated in the death of a male acquaintance. Released, although thoroughly shaken-up, Marion attempts to perform but loses her voice onstage. Humiliated, but driven to sing, she travels to South America under the assumed name of Maria Delasano, and works in an opera company under the tutelage of Feodor Glinka, who wants her to shun men and save herself for her art. Mary resists the persistent attentions of wealthy young Phil Roberts, who follows the company in hopes of marrying her. ...

Kitty Vane, Alan Trent, and Gerald Shannon have been inseparable friends since childhood. Kitty has always known she would marry one of them, but has waited until the beginning of World War I before finally choosing Alan. Gerald graciously gives them his blessing. Then, Gerald and Alan go to war. Angered over a misunderstanding involving Alan and Kitty, Gerald sends Alan on a dangerous mission that will change all their lives forever.

The Grand Hotel formula that was so overworked in the 1930s made an encore appearance in 1940's Escape to Glory. The story is given timeliness by placing the characters on a British merchant ship on the very day that World War II is declared. The ship is attacked by a Nazi U-Boat, resulting in a variety of reactions from the diverse passengers--one of whom (Erwin Kalser) is a German doctor. Constance Bennett is glamorous, Pat O'Brien is boozy, John Halliday is pensive, and everybody else (except for the German medico) is plain fearful.

A mob boss has a change of heart when his daughter convinces him to move on from crime.

As Diana Barry is preparing to leave New York to marry inventor Tommy Mason she is offered financial assistance from her ex-lover Dick Kent, who still has a thing for her. Refusing she heads to Sparta, where she informs Tommy of her affair with the older man. Tommy tells her that he doesn't want to know the man's name or any details and Diana is happy to forget the past and move on. This decision comes to bite them a year later though, when Kent returns into the picture.

Fresh from his success with the moody melodrama Murders in the Rue Morgue, director Robert Florey dashed off The Man Called Back at bargain-basement Tiffany Studios. The film is set in the tropics; Conrad Nagel tops the cast as a dissipated, derelict doctor, hopelessly in love with married socialite Doris Kenyon. Doris' insane husband John Halliday commits suicide, but arranges the evidence so that his wife will be charged with murder.

With a full Hollywood background and settings but more an expose of scandal-and-gossip magazines of the era, has-been actor John Blakeford agrees to write his memoirs for magazine-publisher Jordan Winston. When Blakeford's daughter, Patricia, ask him to desist for the sake of his ex-wife, Carlotta Blakeford, he attempts to break his contract with Winston.

After neglecting her studies in favor of romantic experiments, Babs Hardcastle is thrown out of boarding school. In hopes of ceasing her romance studies, Babs’s father sends her to Boston to stay with her aunt. Boston, however, proves to be the perfect place for Babs’s matchmaking. When Babs falls in love with Jim Winthrop, she learns that he must find suitable men for his two sisters, Dorcas and Matilda, and his elderly aunt Cornelia, before he can marry. Babs, determined to marry Jim, takes it upon herself to find them all husbands.

A recently impoverished but formerly wealthy young woman ends up working as a nightclub hostess. There she meets a handsome, sophisticated and wealthy fellow who hires her to help him spice up his weekend parties. She begins helping him and regains her lost wealth and posh lifestyle.

Virginia, who studies at a boarding school for upper-class girls, falls in love with a medical intern who works as a waiter for a living. Both the director of the school and her mother oppose such a relationship.

In this comedy, two men make an extravagant $50,000 dollar bet that one of them will be able to successfully court a lovely woman without spending any money. To foil his scheme, the other bettor hires two henchmen to stop him.

Dashing reporter Vincent Bullit has just returned from covering the Spanish Civil War. His boss, newspaper magnate Fullerton, has more plans to send him off to China. However, first Fullerton invites Bullit to the peace and quiet of his own home to write a series of European affair articles. When Fullerton's adolescent daughter Alice develops a crush on Bullit, her suitor, boyscout Ken Warren, doesn't seem to stand a chance. Mr. and Mrs. Fullerton, Ken Warren, and even Vincent Bullit himself do their best to sway young Alice's feelings away from the older man. It's a difficult task though, as she is at 'that certain age.'

The Devil's Toy is a 1916 American silent drama film directed by Harley Knoles and starring Adele Blood, Edwin Stevens and Montagu Love.

Jim and Mary are a betrothed couple whose devotion to each other is tested when a famous actress comes to town.

Young Bill Emory is a typical mischievous, rambunctious boy, but his father William is a strict disciplinarian, and Bill is constantly being punished for simple childhood transgressions. Finally Bill can take no more of his father's excessive punishments and runs away. Complications ensue.

A 1920 film directed by Roy William Neill.

Bobby Jones teaches a group of truant businessman how to improve their chip shots.

The serialized story of a group of young Colonial patriots battling in the Revolutionary War against the hated British and their murderous American Indian allies. Based on the popular pulp publication of the same name. Surviving episodes include 'The Blue Riders', 'In the Hands of the Enemy' and 'The Night Raiders'.

Sweethearts pitted against lovers, wives against husbands, sons against mothers, in a frantic struggle to escape the clutch and claw of the 'Tcheka,' Russia's sinister spy system.

A piano virtuoso has a child out of wedlock; the father, her fiancé, is killed trying to save her life. Their son is brought up by foster parents and becomes a musician.

In this conversation, conducted in 2025, filmmaker James Gray and film critic Sean Fennessey discuss SORCERER’s politics and its shifting reputation, from infamous flop to reappraised masterpiece.