Dad’s Choice / Paths to Paradise (1928/1925)

With many of his films lost, silent screen comic Raymond Griffith is all but forgotten today. The rediscovery of all but the final reel of his film PATHS TO PARADISE in the 1970s was a revelation. The “Silk Hat Comedian” stars as a suave jewel thief who first cons lady thief Betty Compson and then convinces her to help steal a valuable necklace. Because a childhood trauma left him unable to speak above a whisper, Griffith had to move behind the camera after the coming of sound, though he was memorable as the French soldier Lew Ayres kills in All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). Character actor Edward Everett Horton shows similar star power in DAD’S CHOICE, one of the eight silent comic shorts he made for Harold Lloyd.

d. Clarence G. Badger, 67m, DCP/d. J.A. Howe, 20m, DCP