Wednesday, October 14, 2026 at 7:30 PM
Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
Man Trouble Year 1930 Country U.S. Runtime 85 min. 35mm B&W North American premiere of new restoration! Man Trouble was based on the short story “A Very Practical Joke” by Ben Ames Williams, published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1925. A crestfallen woman, Joan (Dorothy Mackaill), decides to take her own life by jumping into a river. Fortunately, she is saved by notorious bootlegger Mac (Milton Sills), who is kind enough to offer a weary woman a job in his nightclub, where he becomes infatuated with her to a fault. Unfortunately for Mac, Joan has fallen for another, gentler man, newspaper columnist George (Kenneth MacKenna). This complex film is part hardboiled gangster film, part melodrama, but it offers so much more. Director: Berthold Viertel. Screenwriter: Ben Ames Williams, Marion Orth, George Manker Watters. With: Milton Sills, Dorothy Mackaill, Kenneth MacKenna. Restoration funding provided by Glenn & Eleanor Padnick and the National Endowment for the Arts. Restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive from a 35mm nitrate print. Laboratory services by The PHI Stoa Film Lab, Film Technology Company, Inc., Audio Mechanics, Simon Daniel Sound. Screening 2 of 2 The Man Who Came Back Year 1924 Country U.S. Runtime 74 min. 35mm B&W Silent North American premiere of new restoration! Live musical accompaniment by Cliff Retallick Based on a 1916 play by Jules Eckert Goodman, The Man Who Came Back tells the story of inebriated philanderer Henry Potter (George O’Brien), whose father, Thomas Potter (Ralph Lewis), is weary of his son tarnishing the family name and wants him to be his own man. During his travels, Henry meets Marcelle (Dorothy Mackaill), an equally downtrodden lady and together they redeem each other through love. The Man Who Came Back is one of the few Fox Film Corporation silent films to survive. Director: Emmett Flynn. Screenwriters: Jules Eckert Goodman, John Fleming Wilson, Edmund Goulding. With: George O’Brien, Dorothy Mackaill, Thomas Potter. Restoration funding provided by the National Film Preservation Foundation’s Roger Mayer Legacy Program. Digitally restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive from a 35mm nitrate domestic print and a 35mm nitrate foreign print. Laboratory services by Roundabout Entertainment, Inc., FotoKem. Special thanks to Národní filmový archiv. We are thrilled to celebrate Silent Movie Day 2026 as part of this screening. Notes written by Theater Manager Lauren Brown.