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Well, there’s roughly seven weeks to go on the calendar, and it looks as though Inside Out 2, Deadpool & Wolverine, and Despicable Me 4 will take home top honors in the 2024 box office race, proving yet again that audiences are not as tired of follow-ups as the experts claim. It may seem hard to imagine, but there was a time when sequels didn’t rule the roost. Let’s turn the hourglass over, say, 100 years, and travel back to 1924. The first Winter Olympics were held in Chamonix, France; J. Edgar Hoover was appointed head of the FBI; and Calvin Coolidge, who became President following Warren G. Harding’s death a year earlier, won a second White House tenure in a landslide victory. The cinema was still silent, and a fascinating slate of films both classic and now-obscure made up the Top 10 roster:
- The Sea Hawk – Based on the 1915 novel by “Captain Blood” author Rafael Sabatini, this early swashbuckler starred Milton Sills as a 16th-century English nobleman who is framed for murder by his scheming brother, forced into working as a galley slave in the Spanish Armada, and escapes to become the renowned captain of a Moorish fighting vessel. Little remembered today, Sills was a popular action hero before he died from a heart attack at 43 in 1930.
- Girl Shy – Meek tailor’s aide Harold (Harold Lloyd) gets tongue-tied trying to talk to women, but nonetheless write a men’s “how-to” guide he calls “The Secret of Making Love.” When his tome gets published as a humor book, Harold must summon up the courage to stop the girl he loves (Jobyna Ralston) from marrying a cad who already has a wife. This fast-paced comedy was the first of two pictures starring the bespectacled comic to make 1924’s Top 10 list.
- Secrets – As her husband John lies on his seeming deathbed, elderly Mary Carlton (Norma Talmadge) looks back on their years together, from when she was a young English girl who eloped with him to their hardscrabble life on the American frontier and her discovery of his infidelity. Frank Borzage directed this elaborate melodrama, as well as the 1933 remake with Mary Pickford.
- The Thief of Bagdad – A landmark in the fantasy cinema genre, director Raoul Walsh’s Arabian Nights-flavored epic stars Douglas Fairbanks as the titular Ahmed, a roguish pickpurse who sets out to win the heart of the Caliph’s beautiful daughter (Julanne Johnston) and battles a scheming Mongol prince. Spectacular set designs by William Cameron Menzies and amazing effects like a magic carpet chase add to the fun.
- Hot Water – The second Harold Lloyd pic on the list was this look at the calamity-filled domestic life of newlyweds Hubby (Lloyd) and Wifey (Jobyna Ralston). The film is comprised of three self-contained vignettes: Harold trying to get a live turkey on a streetcar, taking the family out for a spin in his new car, and mistakenly thinking he’s killed his sleepwalking mother-in-law. The first two tales can be seen in the 1962 compilation film Harold Lloyd’s World of Comedy.
- Feet of Clay – Now considered a “lost film,” director Cecil B. DeMille’s drama stars Rod LaRocque as a young man who marries the woman (Vera Reynolds) he saved from drowning in a surfboard race, only to be bitten on the foot by a shark. Unable to work, LaRocque must sit back and watch as his wife becomes a top fashion model.
- Triumph – Another “DeMilleodrama,” with Rod LaRocque co-starring alongside Victor Varconi as half-brothers fighting for both control of their father’s cannery and the attentions of a beautiful cannery worker (Leatrice Joy) who dreams of becoming a famous singer. This was C.B.’s final picture for Paramount Pictures for eight years after feuding with studio head Adolph Zukor.
- He Who Gets Slapped – The first film produced by the newly-merged Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio, this twisted tale of revenge under the Big Top stars Lon Chaney as a scientist whose research (and wife) are stolen by a scheming Baron who slaps him in front of an audience of academicians. Humiliated by the experience, Chaney finds work as a circus clown called “He Who Gets Slapped.” When the Baron shows up in the crowd and tries to seduce an equestrian rider (Norma Shearer) “He” loves, the hate-filled harlequin sets out to avenge himself.
- Beau Brummel – Who better in 1924 to portray the legendary soldier/ladies’ man/fashion-plate of Regency Era England than “The Great Profile” himself, John Barrymore? Mary Astor plays Lady Margery Alvanley, the former commoner who loved him when they were young and who tries to save Brummel from the nobles who are plotting his downfall. Stars Barrymore and Astor began a highly-publicized real-life affair while making the picture.
- His Hour – John Gilbert stars as a Russian prince who woos a pretty English noblewoman (Aileen Pringle) wary of simply becoming the playboy prince’s latest romantic conquest. This lush romance was the first of five MGM teamings for leading man Gilbert and director King Vidor and was penned by pioneering female screenwriter Elinor Glyn.