(Victor Schertzinger, US 1917, 57 min., 35mm)
A recent George Eastman Museum film preservation from 2024, The Millionaire Vagrant is a social drama directed by renaissance man Victor Schertzinger, who made fourteen films with mercurial actor Charles Ray between 1917 and 1919. In this second of those collaborations, Ray plays young millionaire Steven Du Peyster, who has little empathy for the downtrodden, insisting that life is not so hard and the crimes they commit are avoidable. Attorney Malcolm Blackridge (J. Barney Sherry) bets him that he cannot live on six dollars a week and that he will fall into the same pattern of criminality. Steven accepts the bet and moves into a boarding house where he quickly learns his lesson, but Blackridge is not all that he appears to be.
Live piano accompaniment by Dr. Philip Carli.
Preceded by...
Teddy at the Throttle
(Clarence G. Badger, US 1917, 18 min., 35mm)