Matthew Betz

A collection of film clips profiling animal actors.

Mystery and adventure, surrounding a stolen rubber harvest.

Night riders are terrorizing homesteaders, and the town doctor tries to keep the locals from forming a vigilante group. After more towns people are killed, however, the rest of the town makes the doctor the town sheriff and tells him to clean up the gang.

In the face of rebellion in Russia, Czar Alexander II sends soldier Michael Strogoff 2,000 miles away, with a critical message for Grand Duke Vladimir. On the train journey, Michael befriends a traveler and comes into contact with a mysterious spy, who both unexpectedly aid him in his quest. Once behind enemy lines, Michael is near his hometown and his mother, whom he must avoid in order to fulfill his mission.

Young Jim Stanton is a conscientious surgeon, but spends too many off-duty hours pursuing his passion for aviation to suit his stuffy father. When it is discovered that a passenger killed in a plane that Jim crashes was a married woman, the resulting scandal prompts the hospital to put Jim on probation. His pride wounded, Jim takes to the open road and enjoys the simpler life of a vagabond. In Los Angeles--where he is arrested for vagrancy and put to work on a road crew--Jim runs into old pal Dick Miller, who gets him a job as a mechanic for Roberts Aviation. But maintaining his anonymity becomes more difficult, particularly when a pretty nurse, Doris King, decides to make Jim's redemption her personal crusade.

A physician in a small town suddenly finds himself the object of vilification and persecution when one of his patients commits suicide.

Buster agrees to pose as a murderer to throw off the police while his room mate, a reporter, searches for the real killer.

Jim Cole, heir to a mining operation, takes over the mine, which is suffering from unexplained low production, and is facing a strike by the miners. Jim will soon loose the mine if production doesn't increase and the sabotage continues. Mary Norsen, office-secretary, accidentally learns of a plot by Fred Johnson to wreck the mine and force Cole to sell his coal-mine. She and her brother, Joe, join Cole in his fight to stop Johnson.

Frankie Reynolds (Frankie Darro' ), youngest member of a family of jockeys, borrows $4.85 (yes, four dollars and eighty-five cents) from his sister Phyllis (Gladys Blake), who is not a jockey, to buy a crippled colt from the stables owned by Clay Harrison (Kane Richmond). He nurses the colt back to health, and in two years has one of the fastest horses in the country.

Government agents try to thwart smugglers, while some sort of plot unfolds, about a hidden treasure revealed by cursed coins.

A Florida-bound train is filled with romance and intrigue when one of the passengers disappears while carrying $11-million in unset jewels.

Upset by discipline at school, a 17-year-old runs away to New York City and learns there are worse problems than going to his little red school house.

Homer Crow, fired from his laboratory job at the Dunn-Wright Rubber Company, is sure that his formula for an indestructible rubber, called Durex, will be a success. Others are also, and Honer endures many obstacles, prat-falls and staged accidents while striving to protect his inventions.

A 12-episode serial in which Tailspin Tommy evades volcanoes, anti-aircraft shells, and time bombs as he foils a plan by corrupt profiteers to steal an island's oil reserves.

A counterfeiter gives up her life of crime and goes straight. She gets a job in a bank, but the members of her former gang hear about it and try to blackmail her into helping them rob the bank.

Elmer attempts to elope with his fiancée, but they escape her parents by driving off in a car that's actually owned by a wanted gangster. When they hear on the radio that the police are looking for them, they dump the car and hide out near a farmhouse. But the farmer's radio also broadcasts the couple's description, so they run away and start hitchhiking, only to be picked up by two policemen. They manage to flee into a railroad yard and hop a train that turns out to be refrigerated. Finally they decide to turn themselves in -- just as they learn that the real crooks have been apprehended.

An agent tracking down a man who disappeared in the mysterious "Ghost Mountain" area discovers discovers the hideout of a gang of murderous outlaws.

Edith Adams, burdened by her family’s financial struggles, faces pressure from her mother to marry well.

Let 'Em Have It is a 1935 gangster film. It was also known as The Legion of Valour and False Faces. An FBI agent tracks down a gang leader.

A corrupt politician adopts a young girl. A few years later he finds himself falling in love with her, but discovers that she in turn loves a rich young bachelor.

Thelma and Patsy find themselves in a spooky house inhabited by a nut who is a mechanical genius and has made a robot who does everything. The inventor manipulates the robot's control board from a hidden room. The girls are soon in a panic. Patsy gets into an argument with the robot and loses the match of wits. Blackie Burke, an escaped convict, is using the house as a hideout, and this adds to the problems the girls already have.

A young pacifist, after refusing on principle to defend her sweetheart's honor and being banished in disgrace, joins a riverboat troupe as a singer, acquires a reputation as a crackshot after a saloon brawl in which the villain of the piece accidentally kills himself with his own gun, falls in love with his former fianceé's sister and finally bullies an apprehensive family into accepting him.

A wealthy playboy winds up getting himself involved with mobsters and a search for buried treasure.

"Stake-Out" Kelly, ace detective, meets Mary Higgins at a small Hollywood sandwich shop where he expects to get some information concerning Packey Davis, head of a ring of jewel thieves. His suspicions are confirmed when Mary warns him that Davis is outside - waiting for him. Kelly sets a trap and, in the ensuing battle, one of the gangsters is killed. Davis is interested in rubbing out Kelly as Kelly and Baker are the only two witnesses against Smitty, a Davis henchman. Baker is in the hospital and the plan is bring Smitty there for identification. Kelly accidentally slips the secret to Mary, who in turn innocently informs Packey. A trap is laid.

Patrolman Jim Trent (Jack La Rue) hears the screams of a woman and rushes to her aid in an upstairs apartment. Inside, he is hit on the head and whiskey poured on his uniform. Gangster Louis Cantor (Mathew Betz) and his henchmen have used this ruse to get him off his beat in order to rob a warehouse. The Police Commissioner (DeWitt Jennings), knowing Trent is innocent, suggests he be dismissed from the force and get a job with the gang. At Cantor's swank gambling establishment Trent finds his girlfriend, Molly Malone (Ada Ince), who has been searching for him. With the evidence he has gathered, Trent captures Cantor and calls for the police.

A distraught movie extra flees a movie set with a fancy costume and car. Circumstances lead her to begin impersonating a Countess, while a fellow extra takes on the role of her servant.

A young bank employee is sent to South America to bring some valuable bonds to a client there. Unfortunately for him, he tends to drink a bit too much and winds up getting involved with a gang that's planning on stealing the bonds to start a revolution.

An elderly detective sets out to find who murdered a lecherous stage actor. His estranged wife? His would-be fiancee? Her father? Her boyfriend? A suicided actress's sister? The temperamental prop man? Or maybe the show's talented female chimpanzee?

Gangsters try to get a boxer to throw an important fight.

Mary Brooks' father, who has been studying ancient tribes, falls into the hands of "the people of Zar, god of the Emerald Fingers." Tarzan helps Mary locate her father, rescues everyone from the High Priest of Zar, and takes Mary to his cave.

A girl with a shady past is picked by a playwright to be the star of his newest play.

Harry is a hobo, one step ahead of the law. After accidentally foiling a purse snatcher, he cadges a ride on a flatbed truck, is knocked out when a wax figure falls on him during the ride, and is carried into a museum by someone thinking he's another manikin. Inside, it takes him a while to figure out that he's among dummies. Then, two enterprising jewel thieves arrive to steal the museum director's priceless ruby. Cops are on hand as well: when the ruby goes missing, Harry may be the perfect fall guy. Can Harry stay away from the cops, foil the theft, and behave heroically in front of the museum director's daughter, the same woman whose purse he saved that morning?

A young woman inherits a textile plant, and finds that she's expected to pay protection money to gangsters who have their own men among the plant's employees.

After years of wandering due to a charge of murder, Tim Reynolds returns to Sagebrush to find the Sheriff Tate Hurley who was his chief accuser. The hatred between the two men was not extinguished, and they first compete in a wrestling match.

In prison for a crime he didn't commit, Tim Richards has escaped and is now a cattle inspector. He is after the Wilder brothers who he thinks are rustling cattle.

A wax sculptor opens a new museum years after he is severely injured during a fire that destroyed his original collection. The disappearance of both people and corpses coincides with this grand reopening and leads a reporter to start investigating.

Paul Vanderkill is extraordinarily wealthy because his grandfather happened to buy farmland in what was to become Midtown Manhattan. The Loveland Dance Hall is one of the tenants of the Vanderkill estates. To reassure his aunt Sophie, Vanderkill visits Loveland to determine whether it is as disreputable as Sophie suspects. There he meets a dime-a-dance girl, Madeleine MacGonagal, who charms him with her quaint proletarian accent. They begin a secret affair, which turns into a secret marriage when pregnancy ensues. When the baby fails to survive, Madeleine decides that since he had married her only for the baby's sake, she should make haste to Mexico to secure a divorce. There she meets Panama Canal Kelly, a former suitor who now owns a silver mine. Her plans for divorce and quick remarriage are complicated when Vanderkill arrives to confront her.

Mike Rolph quits his job, seemingly, as a highway patrolman and takes the position of the Police Chief of W. J. Brady's oil refinery. He is also romantically involved with Brady's daughter, June. It appears that some highly-placed employee has sold out to the opposition refinery people, and much sabotage and havoc is being caused.

The Government has approved Betty Castelar's Spanish land grant and notification is sent via pony express. Porter is after her ranch and waylay's rider Buck Carson to get the letter. Left to die in the desert, he is saved by Castelar's horse and brought to her ranch. When Porter later arrives, a peculiar mannerism lets Buck identify him as the gang leader and he vows to get the letter back.

An ex-con makes for a backwoods town intending to rob the bank, and becomes involved in protecting three orphans from land swindlers instead.

Would-be photographer Harry gets his big chance when a newspaper wants pictures of a prominent gangster and his girl. Harry and another photographer first visit the gangster's girl, and then wait at the scene of an expected robbery. But before they can get the pictures they want, they must first distract a policeman whose presence would otherwise deter the gangster from appearing.

When Tim Barrett rides into Carabinas, his reputation as a lawman precedes him. Rescuing Polly Loomis from the unwanted attentions of a saloon ruffian, he learns her mother married ranch foreman Nick Grindel shortly before her death, and left everything to him in her will. Nick has proposed marriage to his stepdaughter, and she fears violence if her hot-blooded brother Dick finds out. When a body is found at the Bow Knot, Tim barely rescues Dick from a necktie party and is deputized to investigate when Dick confesses to a crime he didn't commit.

A cowboy turned gold miner fights a gang that buys miner's claims and then murders them.

A cowboy detective goes up against a gang of big-city thugs trying to set up a protection racket out west.

The Wrecker wrecks trains on the L & R Railroad. One of his victims is Larry Baker's father. Baker wants to find the evildoer, among a host of suspects, but it will be difficult since the Wrecker can disguise himself to look like almost anyone

More mile-a-minute action with the stunt ace Richard Talmadge playing the loafer son of a shipbuilder facing financial ruin. Bob Stuart takes charge of the company's development of a new speedboat - unaware that gangsters and saboteurs want to thwart them and won't stop at murder. Filled with gymnastic action-packed fights, Speed Madness is "a knockout for fans who cheer the hero and hiss the villain.

A young woman trying to obtain proof that a gangster committed a murder is befriended by a playboy who drinks just a bit too much.

When a railroad engineer refuses to participate in a strike, the union drops him and he loses his job.

Not knowing he has just been pardoned, Tim Benton (Tim McCoy, Texas Cyclone) escapes from prison with his cellmate, Red Larkin (Matthew Betz, The Wedding March), a dangerous killer. Disguised as the town's lawman, Tim sets off for Silver City to take back money that's rightfully his and hopefully clear his name. But Red has plans of his own and wants the money for himself. Newly remastered.

A young man, framed and sent to prison for a crime he didn't commit, is released after serving his stretch and vows to find those responsible for framing him. Meanwhile he sets up a mission in the slums he came from, and falls in love with a girl he meets there.

A circus side show performer tries to discourage her younger sister from following in her footsteps.

After the success of "Little Caesar," "Public Enemy" and "Scarface," here is the inevitable parody, in which Liddle Sizzer engages in a vicious Chicago gang war. He's aided by his innocent twin brother, Julius, a greenhorn from the Old Country. Both are played by Benny Rubin.

Young Nell loses everything and her father is sent to prison. She joins the Salvation Army and tries to redeem him when he comes out....

Stout Hearts and Willing Hands is a 1931 short comedy film directed by Bryan Foy. It was nominated for an Academy Award in 1932 for Best Short Subject (Comedy), but was disqualified.

A lady-bootlegger does her 90 days in jail, gets released and becomes the secretary for a prominent millionaire. The magnate falls madly in love with his new secretary and they marry. Unfortunately, she has not revealed her shady past to him, and when friends from her smuggling days suddenly show up as employees, mayhem ensues.

Two men, one timid and one aggressive, make out as comical criminals.

A prostitute sees a friendly sailor as a way out of Havana's grimy underworld.

A gangster's wife, fearful that he is about to be murdered by his rivals, tips off the police to his whereabouts in order to save his life. Her husband, however, believes her reason was that she wanted him out of the way so she could have his best friend.

A gambler wanted for murder hides under the guise of a clergyman.

Convicted of manslaughter for a drunken driving accident, Kent Marlowe is sent to prison, where he meets vicious incarcerated figures who are planning an escape from the brutal conditions.

The honeymoon of Prince Nicki in the Alps, and the wedding of Mitzi and Schani. Mitzi still loves Nicki, and jealous Schani decides once again to kill the prince. Schani shoots at Nicki, but Cecilia throws herself in front of Nicki. Schani becomes a fugitive and goes into hiding. Nicki and Mitzi meet one last time, where Mitzi tells Nicki that she will go to a convent. Nicki goes off to war, where he is killed. Sequel to von Stroheim's The Wedding March released only in Europe. The only known copy was destroyed in a fire at the Cinémathèque Française in 1959.

A pretty young cashier at a movie theater has a few problems--a local thug is interested in her and won't leave her alone, and she discovers that her uncle is stealing the box-office receipts.

In his last film, silent star William Russell plays the motorcycle policeman father of one of the restless and reckless new generation of late 1920s youth. The film was controversial as an early example of the rising tide of violence and disrespect for the law that would become key themes in the 1930s.

Nightclub singer Alice Carroll is found in the office of club owner Al Barrow, who is lying dead on the floor. Alice has been overheard threatening to kill Barrow rather than give in to his advances. She protests her innocence, but the District Attorney doesn't believe her and charges her with Barrow's murder. However, things aren't quite as cut-and-dried as the D.A. believes them to be.

A married restaurant owner is persuaded to become a bootlegger by a beautiful young girl. When he starts making money at it, she steals it, then runs off with another man. His wife finds out what happened. Complications ensue.

Against the backdrop of Vienna's hidebound caste system, aristocrat and army officer Nicki is attracted to peasant Mitzi, although he knows it cannot last. Acquiescing to familial pressure, he ultimately gives her up to marry the more socially acceptable – albeit crippled – heiress Cecelia. Mitzi, for her part, is heartbroken and must resign herself to marrying churlish butcher Schani Eberle.

Guests at an old English manor house are stalked by a mysterious killer known only as "The Terror".

The journalist Don Davis becomes involved in a murder case, where Chrystal Malone is part of it. Davis follows Chrystal to China. When Chrystal arrives in China, Davis has to save her from an execution.

Gregory Kent is on the run for a crime he did not commit.

David Howitt, a stranger, comes among the mountain folk of the Missouri hills and, taken in by an Ozark family, becomes known as The Shepherd because of his gentle and kindly ways. Years earlier, his son betrayed a mountaineer's daughter, and The Shepherd hopes to atone for his error. When a continued drought threatens the people with starvation and ruin, they lose faith in the "miracle man" and mock him, though he begs them to keep the faith.

To protect her brother, a nightclub entertainer Queenie Morgan marries a gangster. She bears a resemblance to a society girl who has gotten involved with the underworld and wound up shooting her gangster boyfriend, and the gang forces Queenie to impersonate the woman in order to extort money from her wealthy parents. Unfortunately the society girl is killed by the gang, and the police arrest Queenie for the murders of both the society girl and her boyfriend.

The Patent Leather Kid is a 1927 silent film which tells the story of a boxer who scoffs at fighting outside the ring... particularly for the United States once it enters World War I. Eventually, he is drafted, is shipped overseas, and performs a heroic act, which results in his being severely wounded.

George Fowler, a young man from the states, arrives at the Mias saloon, and the proprietor, "Blak Jack" Hovey, orders a saloon girl, known only as "The Flame," to fleece him. When she learns he doesn't have any money she gets him a job at a café. News of a gold strike in the Ophir area comes, and George sets out, with a dog team supplied by Flame. Meanwhile a woman comes to town, says she is Mrs. Fowler and is looking for her husband.

Larry O'Neil, a ship's cook, finds and befriends stowaway Lois Austin, who is a fugitive from a murder charge. The ship's captain, Klodel, also finds her and forces her to do his will as he has received a cablegram and knows she is hunted.

Adapted by Alice Duer Miller from a novel by Alden Brooks, the film concerns a young man who forsakes the humdrum business world for the bohemian life of an artist. Josef von Sternberg had been the original director of Exquisite Sinner, but MGM was dissatisfied with the picture and refused to release it. When the film finally surfaced in 1926 (a full year after its completion), it had been radically altered by staff director Phil Rosen.

Oh! What a Nurse! is a 1926 American comedy film directed by Charles Reisner and written by Darryl F. Zanuck. The film stars Sydney Chaplin, Patsy Ruth Miller, Gayne Whitman, Matthew Betz, Edith Yorke, and David Torrence. The film was released by Warner Bros. on March 7, 1926.

Beautiful Dot Walker is part of a ring of crooks in San Francisco, who use her to lure impressionable young men into a crooked card game. Young Johnny has come to the big city to sell his grandmother's hotel back in his home town, but he falls under Dot's spell, gets suckered into the game and loses all his money. He asks his newfound "friends" to come back to his hometown to buy the hotel. They accept but are actually planning to swindle Johnny's grandmother out of her hotel. It turns out that Granny isn't quite the easy mark they thought she would be.

Adapted from the play The Merry Wives of Gotham, twin sisters are separated at birth - one of them becomes a society girl in New York, the other lives in the Irish slums.

Three sideshow performers form a conspiracy known as "The Unholy Three" - a ventriloquist, midget, and strongman working together to commit a series of robberies.

A newspaper publisher finds out that his wild daughter has fallen in with a ring of gamblers. A reporter who has infiltrated the gang to get a story falls in love with the gang's female leader, and when the two are caught in a police raid, they find themselves in equal amounts of trouble.

Silent version of the classic Jack London tale.

To spite her fiancé, who claims to know how to handle women, Rosamond engages in reckless behavior, including racing cars and getting arrested. Climax: After surviving a car crash, she is captured by criminals but eventually rescued, leading to her submissive reform.

A lighthouse keeper and his daughter are in trouble on two fronts--if the authorities find out he is going blind they will remove him, and a gang of liquor-smugglers is trying to destroy the lighthouse so they can land their illegal cargo on shore without being spotted.

A 1924 film directed by Sidney Olcott.

Young Gallito (Allan Forrest) wants very badly to become a matador. His sweetheart, Dolores (Priscilla Dean), does everything she can to help him and she wheedles Pedro, a renowned bullfighter (Matthew Betz), into helping him, too. Gallito becomes a success, but he is vamped by Ardita (Claire Delorez) after Pedro is killed in the ring.

A federal agent assigned to stop a bootlegging gang joins forces with the gang leader's wife and the sister of one of the ring's truck drivers to break up the gang.

Toughened criminal Jim Reagan tries to persuade his brother, Larry, to go straight, but Larry attempts to rob a banker, Richard Milton, and is arrested. Milton refuses to be lenient, and when Larry is killed trying to escape from prison, Jim and his wife, Molly, resolve to have vengeance.

A kindly old woman named Mrs. Rand takes in wayward girl and petty crook Molly O'Hara, known as "Angel Face" to her gang. Mrs. Rand eventually gets Molly to see the error of her ways and she reforms. However, it her son John that has strayed from the straight and narrow and is part of a big money bunco. It's Molly's turn to help out the old woman, by reforming John as he falls in love with her.

The no-good son of a company owner is sent to investigate a problematic business deal.

Tim Goodwin and his wife Corrie are living in poverty when Tim's oil well strikes it rich. He soon works his way to the top of the social scale, but Corrie doesn't change at all--she stays a dour, drab woman with no social skills whatsoever. Tim gets so embarrassed by her that he hires a "social secretary" for her to teach her how to function in the social strata in which they find themselves.

Nita Moore, a circus performer, is mistreated by the ringmaster and runs away to join an old couple who are persuaded that Nita is their longlost daughter. Phillip Lessoway, the couple's lawyer, falls in love with Nita, but after a quarrel he discovers and reveals to the adoptive parents that Nita is an imposter.

A young man is bet $100,000 that his famous luck can hold out and he can make that sum in one year's time, literally starting with nothing. He proceeds to Pennsylvania, where prize fight winnings are used to build a new town.

After serving time in Sing Sing, for which he was unjustly sentenced, and encouraged by two "sharpers," Richard Goodloe returns to the home of his wealthy southern mother in dread fear that she and Virginia Sanders should learn of his prison record--a fear which is constantly nurtured by his rival, Con Arnold.

When New York City police officer O'Malley learns of a young man who is about to embark on a life of crime by taking part in a robbery, he takes the boy aside and tells him the story of Boomerang Bill, another wanna-be gangster who wanted to be a big shot in the New York crime scene. It seems that Bill fell for a pretty young dance-hall girl, and went up against local gang boss Tony the Wop when he insulted her. Tony, who never forgot a slight, found a way to make things very, very tough for Boomerang Bill, in a way that he never saw coming.

A damsel-in-distress Western melodrama and a stirring picture of railroad construction and the mining country, with a Snidely Whiplash villain performing dastardly deeds, a spunky and gritty Polly Pureheart heroine and a brave Handsome Harry hero...and filled with action, romance, adventure, bravery...and perils.

Car racer Burn 'em Up Barnes, son of a wealthy manufacturer, leaves home to make his own way in the world. After being robbed by hoodlums, Barnes joins a group of hobos who take him in and show him the carefree life.

Rev. Robert Martin is an ex-minister who has lost his faith because of his wife's faithlessness, and taken up a life of crime as head of a band of pickpockets masquerading as religious workers who ply their trade in the wake of a traveling carnival company. He tries to keep the true nature of his work secret from his daughter Julie, but she learns the truth while traveling with his band for a week.

Billy Brice has been disqualified from the race track. He becomes sweetheart to a car manufacturer's daughter. Billy helps deal with the man's disgruntled ex-employees and hopes to clear his name so that he may race again.

When a train crash kills Horace Barney, the heir to a fortune that his doctors and guardians were planning to extort the unscrupulous trio quickly substitute his double Jack Trevor who by chance was on the same locomotive but knocked unconscious. Once awakened, Jack realizes the duplicity but plays along to try and foil the plot and save the estate for Barney’s cousin Helen who is the true heir and with whom he has fallen in love.

Dan Ryan and Fritz Noodle, two would-be politicians, succumb to the charming mannerisms of the Widow Guggenheimer. The widow is undecided which one she shall select for a husband, but finally tells them she will marry the one who wins the election, the office to be that of Chicken Coop Inspector.