Taken while ascending some 2,000 yards into the clouds, and represents a most diversified view of the city of San Francisco, the Golden Gate, Pacific Ocean, and surrounding country for miles. The huge balloon from which this picture was taken is 75 feet in diameter, 250 feet in circumference and about 105 feet high, and it requires some 150,000 feet of gas to raise it from the ground.
This pseudo-newsreel uses special effects to illustrate the fire caused by the San Francisco earthquake. A miniature model of downtown San Francisco is set ablaze and filmed.
In 1915-16, San Diego's Balboa Park was the scene of an exposition to mark completion of the Panama Canal. This film takes us through the exposition: from the Cabrillo bridge and a panoramic view of the site, to the facades of the California Building, Horticultural Building, Panama Canal Exhibit, and the reproduction of the locks at Gatuna. We see tourists on the isthmus and a crowd outside the Panama Film Company's exhibit of how movies are made. We watch the feeding of fish at the laguna, and we end at the Plaza de Panama where toddlers are surrounded by pigeons. Fatty Arbuckle makes a brief appearance outside the Panama Film exhibit. Titles give us each structure's cost.
In San Francisco, well-known sportsman Kay Hoog announces to a club that he has found a message in a bottle with a map drawn by a Harvard professor who has gone missing. The map tells of a lost Incan civilization that possesses an immense treasure. Hoog immediately plans an expedition to find it. But Lio Sha, the head of a criminal organization known as the Spiders, is determined to get the treasure for herself and plans a rival expedition.
Blizzard, deranged from a childhood operation in which both his legs were needlessly amputated after an accident, becomes a vicious criminal, and eventually mob leader of the San Francisco underworld.
Dinty is a newsboy whose fight to care for his ailing mother leads him into conflicts with the other boys on the street and then with drug smugglers in Chinatown.
Silent Madden and his daughter Molly have left the criminal underworld of San Francisco thanks to the wise teachings of Chang Low, a Confucian master. But the evil Black Mike Sylva is determined to frame Madden to avenge a mistake from the past…
Wealthy young man Ramon Laredo is abducted and put into service aboard a ship commanded by a none-too-scrupulous smuggler. When the ship encounters the foundering "Lady Letty," some of the Letty's crew is brought aboard, including Letty 'Moran' Sternerson, feisty daughter of the Letty's captain. Moran and Ramon have little use for each other, but when trouble erupts and the smuggler Captain Kitchell turns his evil eye on Moran, it is Ramon who comes to her rescue.
Sheriff Pat Halahan comes into an inheritance and travels to San Francisco to collect. Faith O’Day, a cat burglar armed with pistol and flashlight breaks into his hotel room and demands that Halahan cough up his dough. Halahan sees her threat and raises her a one-dollar bet that he can return a brooch she stole earlier the same evening before its loss is discovered. Pulling off his boots to slip on his own “soft shoes,” Halahan sets off to do a little second-story work, not realizing the trouble he’s in for.
The snooty Fernanda decides to leave Spain to visit her uncle in San Francisco in order to escape the attentions of the dandy, amorous Don Diego, but he follows her. She is rescued from a wild taxi ride by a passerby who owns a huge plumbing company. Believing him to be a common plumber, she snubs him, but he pursues her and a romantic rivalry is born.
Albert Gran and E.J. Ratcliffe are warring San Francisco shipping magnates; Mary Brian is Gran’s daughter and Charles (Buddy) Rogers is Ratcliffe’s athletic son. The result is a swift, exhilarating comedy, full of laughs and a nonchalant charm.
Left penniless by her vengeful ex-husband, Madeline is forced to become a pickpocket to pay for a new wardrobe. One of her victims is a Mr. Finlay, who threatens to turn her over to the police -- until he hears Madeline's woeful tale of her cruel, possessive husband.
In San Francisco, a villainous landowner with underworld connections seeks to steal the property of an old Spanish family.
A young Jewish man is torn between tradition and individuality when his old-fashioned family objects to his career as a jazz singer. This is the first full length feature film to use synchronized sound, and is the original film musical.
When he's forced to kill his best friend, a Chinese hit man adopts the man's daughter.
On the night express train from Los Angeles to San Francisco everyone’s a suspect when a jewelry magnate is found stabbed to death and an escaped killer is feared on board. It’s up to newspaper reporter Jimmy Hawley (Ben Lyon) to unravel the secrets of the motley group of passengers and find the killer before he strikes again in this tense and atmospheric whodunit.
Jenny is carrying the child of a young man who dies in the San Francisco earthquake (1906). After giving birth, she decides to place her child in the custody of a wealthy married couple. Years later, thanks to the protection of a corrupt politician, she becomes the main "madame" of San Francisco, in addition to participating in various illegal activities.
A spinster dressmaker falls for a ne'er-do-well.
Mary Rutledge arrives from the east, finds her fiancé dead, and goes to work at the roulette wheel of Luis Chamalis' Bella Donna, a rowdy gambling house in San Francisco in the 1850s. She falls in love with miner Jim Carmichael and takes his gold dust at the wheel. She goes after him, Chamalis goes after her with intent to harm Carmichael.
After a roustabout sailor avoids being shanghaied in 1850s San Francisco, his audacity helps him rise to a position of power in the vice industry of the infamous Barbary Coast.