Directed by Erle C. Kenton • 1928

One of a handful of surviving silent features from Columbia Pictures, and made when Frank Capra was just another name on the call sheet and not yet the Poverty Row studio's ticket to respectability, The Sideshow is the kind of unpretentious, bread-and-butter entertainment that regularly tumbled out of the Gower Gulch assembly line to meet the demands of small-town exhibitors. After the dissolution of her family's trapeze act, Queenie (Marie Prevost) takes up with the traveling sideshow troupe of P. W. Melrose ("Little Billy" Rhodes), a circle of social outcasts harboring a saboteur. Melrose suspects carnival barker Ted Rogers (Ralph Graves) to be the culprit, an accusation that could also serve as a swift resolution to their mutual pursuit of Queenie. The Sideshow offered a role with rare dramatic shading for Rhodes, a little person who built his career on stereotyped gigs in The Wizard of Oz and The Terror of Tiny Town. Alas, the uncommon respect went little noticed because the film itself was treated like a sideshow on the fringe of a changing industry. "Here is a picture made last winter by Columbia before the talking era really hit," observed Motion Picture News. "It's too bad. [The] story and scenario … would go across strong with dialogue …. The picture should go over quite well in those houses which are denied the feature talkies." (KW)

67 min • Columbia Pictures • 35mm from Sony Pictures Repertory

Cartoon: "Felix the Cat Trumps the Ace" (Otto Mesmer, 1926) - 8 min - 16mm

Live accompaniment by Music Box house organist Dennis Scott