These talented stars are on the rise. How many do you recognize?

These Stars Are on the Rise

Get a closer look at some of the most talented families in Hollywood.

Famous Families of Hollywood

These big screen releases can now be watched from the comfort of your couch.

Theatrical Releases You Can Stream or Rent

Society melodrama about a wealthy father who purchases an island to prove to his son that communism won't work.

A Misleading Title Attempts to Confer Topicality Upon a Film Version of a Novel Published Ten Years Earlier

The Russian Revolution thoroughly alarmed post-First World War America, and &#39;Bolshevism on Trial&#39; is often mentioned as a high-profile component in the United States&#39; response to this new threat from the East. Based, like &#39;Birth of a Nation&#39;, on a novel by the Southern Baptist minister Thomas Dixon Jr., &#39;Bolshevism on Trial&#39; sidesteps the former&#39;s outrageous racism by having only one non-white character, Saka, played by Chief Standing Bear, who proudly declares himself &quot;Me tame Indian -- no like-um Red&quot;. The original novel, &#39;Comrades: A Story of Social Adventure in California&#39; was published in 1909, and the print available on YouTube bears the title of a later recut version, &#39;Shattered Dreams&#39;, so we&#39;re not seeing exactly the same film that audiences saw in 1919. The word &#39;Bolshevism&#39; never actually appears in &#39;Shattered Dreams&#39;, the group that socialite heroine Barbara Alden (Inez Nesbit) throws in her lot with being variously described as socialists, communists and as reds; disdainfully portrayed as a bunch of useless, bohemian layabouts rather than as an imminent threat to western civilisation. Leading man Robert Frazer is most likely to be recognisable to modern audiences as the hero of &#39;White Zombie&#39; (1932). His millionaire father, Colonel Henry Bradshaw (Henry Truesdale), is - the film tells us - &quot;a brain worker&quot; whose inventions have increased the comfort of his generation, created work for thousands of employes (sic) and brought wealth to himself; but presumably he&#39;s now retired, since he spends most of the film seated in his palatial home (complete with an indoor fountain) staring sternly into space like most rich men in silent films. As portrayed by Leslie Stowe, bolshevik-in-chief Herman Wolff is an ugly, scowling brute who in a prophetic nod to the antics of more recent cult leaders (SPOILER COMING) ditches his wife Catherine (played by Ethel Wright) to make a play for Barbara before being foiled by a naval occupation and exposed as really being named &quot;Androvitch&quot;.

tt0009950

Bolshevism on Trial

Events in Russia during and after World War One worried capitalist countries. Vladimir Lenin and his cohorts in 1917, aided by Germany, snuck into the country, taking advantage of a deteriorating government by overthrowing the Tsar and assuming the functions of Russia. With the war over, other European countries were looking at possible full-scale revolutions by Communist sympathizers who realized the current governments threw away lives needlessly and ruined their economies and personal savings. A small Boston production company, Mayflower Photoplay, produced its first motion picture, a propaganda movie on the pitfalls of a collectivistic society, in the release of April 1919 &quot;Bolshevism on Trial,&quot; aka &quot;Shattered Dreams.&quot; The movie was based on Thomas Dixon&#39;s (yes, the same author who wrote &quot;The Clansman&quot; from which D. W. Griffith extrapolated his &quot;Birth of a Nation&quot;) 1909 novel &quot;Comrade: A Story of Social Adventure in California.&quot;
The script relocated the setting of the communist experiment from an island off San Francisco to one off Florida. &quot;Bolshevism,&quot; filmed in Palm Beach, Florida, follows a group of passionate organizers and workers excited at the prospects of establishing and living in a highly-socialized community where everyone works hard earning the same wages as everyone else while everything is provided for them. Needless to say, things go haywire as the workers rebel about the unfairness of their supervisors. They begin to see that its leader, Herman Wolff (played by Leslie Stowe) is nothing but a lecherous, greedy nobody who uses an appealing philosophy for his own personal gains. A modern account of the 100-year-old film served as a warning to those more moderates in the Democratic Party when Bernie Sanders was gaining steam in the early 2020 party primaries, seeing the movie as possible fodder by the Republicans of what the country would look like under a Sanders&#39; administration.

User reviews

Bolshevism on Trial

A Misleading Title Attempts to Confer Topicality Upon a Film Version of a Novel Published Ten Years Earlier

First Anti-Red American Movie

More from this title

More to explore

Recently viewed