...that being The Shield of Honor (1927, which was about a L. A. cop facing mandatory retirement at 65. A city's fire department is almost the O'Neil family business, employing the grandfather, father, and three grandsons. But the city is plagued by buildings built by a contractor who underbids everyone by cutting every corner--fires in these buildings claim two of the three grandsons. And when this contractor, secretly in league with the city's leading philanthropist, wins the contract to build a new orphanage, I felt like I was watching a Batman plot. Of course the philanthropist has a beautiful daughter, who falls madly in love with the youngest O'Neil grandson. Of course the newly opened orphanage catches fire when the paint plant across the street explodes. And of course young O'Neil and the city's other firefighters rescue all the young orphans, even as the shoddy building falls down around them. But this is a handsomely mounted production--the burning building sequences are impressively staged, and the big orphanage fire is further enhanced with red and orange hand coloring.
The scene of the orphanage burning and the orphans being rescued was in the 1980 documentary "Silent Hollywood" as an example of well made silent film, though just a programmer, that broke the stereotypes of silent films that are commonly held.
The scene of the orphanage burning and the orphans being rescued was in the 1980 documentary "Silent Hollywood" as an example of well made silent film, though just a programmer, that broke the stereotypes of silent films that are commonly held.