This MGM Passing Parade series short recounts how English chemist John Walker invented the wooden friction match during the 1820s.
Social & External
The people behind it
John Nesbitt
Narrator (voice)
Paul Langton
John Walker (uncredited)
Jacqueline White
Mrs. John Walker (uncredited)
Eusebio José Fernández López Reboredo Bergamín is a teenager in the 1960s whose dream is to be a movie director, but General Francisco Franco prohibited in 1964 all types of art. A coincidental encounter with another artist, named Antonio Mínguez, will change his life.
In November 1947 forty-one people died in a massive blaze that gutted the huge Ballantynes Department Store complex in the heart of Christchurch’s business district. This is the tragic story of New Zealand’s worst fire disaster.
At the turn of the century, Lodz, Poland, was a quick-paced manufacturing center for textiles, replete with cutthroat industrialists and unsafe working conditions. Three young friends, a Pole, a Jew, and a German, pool their money together to build a factory.
The 1939 dramatic short "Angel of Mercy," about Red Cross founder Clara Barton, is reedited to relate the story to America's involvement in World War II. Edited from Angel of Mercy (1939)
In early 1860s New York, Irish immigrant Amsterdam Vallon is released from prison and returns to the Five Points, seeking revenge against his father's killer, William Cutting, a powerful anti-immigrant gang leader. He knows that revenge can only be attained by infiltrating Cutting's inner circle. Vallon's journey becomes a fight for personal survival and to find a place for the Irish people.
Denmark in 1927. The ambitious police officer Otto Himmelstrup leads the newly formed Special Unit, which is tasked with assisting local police in solving particularly difficult crimes. When a body is found in a burnt-out summer house in Esbjerg, Otto and his team begin to unravel an unusual murder mystery, revealing power struggles and corruption among the city’s elite. The closer the unit gets to the truth, the more dangerous it becomes. Soon, Otto finds himself not only battling powerful enemies but also confronting his own dark side in his quest to solve the case.
For those who heart history and the great city of Chicago, this film will take you through time with a small child and his nervous babysitter. Feel the intensity of the Great Chicago Fire and splendor of the World’s Columbian Exposition. Explore the sights of bustling Maxwell Street in the 1950s and peer down from an I-beam of the Sears Tower in the 1970s. Relive Chicago sports victories and cheer on President Obama during his Grant Park victory speech.
This Passing Parade series short chronicles the political life of Francisco Madero, who tried to bring democracy and land reform to Mexico.
This MGM Passing Parade series short tells the story of Julian Poydras, whose encounter with a girl at Mardi Gras had a profound effect on his later life.
Historical short showing how Eli Whitney (best known for the invention of the cotton gin) played a significant role in the introduction of mass production techniques to the USA in the late 18th century.
Since the invention of the automobile, women have distinguished themselves by their daring: the history of women in motor sport.
While on holiday in Rhodes, Athenian war hero Darios becomes involved in two different plots to overthrow the tyrannical king, one from Rhodian patriots and the other from sinister Phoenician agents.
True story of Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the telephone, inspired by his mother.
The insatiably curious and headstrong inventor Leonardo da Vinci leaves Italy to join the French court, where he can experiment freely, inventing flying contraptions, incredible machines, and study the human body. There, joined in his adventure by the audacious princess Marguerite, Leonardo will uncover the answer to the ultimate question – "What is the meaning of it all?"
This John Nesbitt's Passing Parade short tells the story of John Peter Zenger, who in Colonial New York was tried for sedition based on what he printed in his newspaper.
This John Nesbitt's Passing Parade series short highlights the film preservation efforts of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Several scenes from early newsreels are shown.
In this John Nesbitt's Passing Parade short, a look is taken at the problems of film preservation efforts in the 1930s and early 1940s.
A portrait of the inventor of the letterpress, who was a key figure in the history of mankind, but also an enthusiastic inventor, a daring businessman, a tenacious troublemaker: the life of Johannes Gutenberg (circa 1400-68).
Alexander Graham Bell falls in love with deaf girl Mabel Hubbard while teaching the deaf and trying to invent means for telegraphing the human voice. She urges him to put off thoughts of marriage until his experiments are complete. He invents the telephone, marries and becomes rich and famous, though his happiness is threatened when a rival company sets out to ruin him.
In 1895, Shivkar Bapuji Talpade constructs and flies India's first unmanned plane, despite having the odds stacked against him.
Electricity titans Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse compete to create a sustainable system and market it to the American people.
Tells the life story of Danish author Karen Blixen, who at the beginning of the 20th century moved to Africa to build a new life for herself. The film is based on her 1937 autobiographical novel.
Buck Weaver and Hap Felsch are young idealistic players on the Chicago White Sox, a pennant-winning team owned by Charles Comiskey - a penny-pinching, hands-on manager who underpays his players and treats them with disdain. And when gamblers and hustlers discover that Comiskey's demoralized players are ripe for a money-making scheme, one by one the team members agree to throw the World Series. But when the White Sox are defeated, a couple of sports writers smell a fix and a national scandal explodes, ripping the cover off America's favorite pastime.
Alvin York a hillbilly sharpshooter transforms himself from ruffian to religious pacifist. He is then called to serve his country and despite deep religious and moral objections to fighting becomes one of the most celebrated American heroes of WWI.
In 1961, a 60-year-old taxi driver stole Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London. It was the first (and remains the only) theft in the Gallery’s history. What happened next became the stuff of legend.
In 1859, idealist John Wickliff Shawnessey, a resident of Raintree County, Indiana, is distracted from his high school sweetheart Nell Gaither by Susanna Drake, a rich New Orleans girl. This love triangle is further complicated by the American Civil War, and dark family history.
Discover the game-changing partnership between a then undiscovered Michael Jordan and Nike's fledgling basketball division which revolutionized the world of sports and culture with the Air Jordan brand.
The O'Leary brothers -- honest Jack and roguish Dion -- become powerful figures, and eventually rivals, in Chicago on the eve of its Great Fire.
The story of Rickey Hill, who overcomes his physical disability and repairs his relationship with his father in a quest to become a major league baseball (MLB) player.
A British ex-convict in colonial Australia and his fragile wife, haunted by the past crime that binds them, struggle to rebuild their lives when a young newcomer stirs long-buried passions and secrets.
The life story of New Zealander Burt Munro, who spent years building a 1920 Indian motorcycle—a bike which helped him set the land-speed world record at Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats in 1967.
A psychological, heart-wrenching love story that provides a unique and inside look at Charles Darwin. Torn between faith and science, he struggles to finish his legendary book "On the Origin of Species," which goes on to become the foundation for evolutionary biology.
An award-winning cynical journalist, Lloyd Vogel, begrudgingly accepts an assignment to write an Esquire profile piece on the beloved television icon Fred Rogers. After his encounter with Rogers, Vogel's perspective on life is transformed.
Biography of Loretta Lynn, a country and western singer that came from poverty to fame.
The story of Ray-Ray McElrathbey, a freshman football player for Clemson University, who secretly raised his younger brother on campus after his home life became too unsteady.
Cultural mistrust and false accusations doom a friendship in British colonial India between an Indian doctor, an Englishwoman engaged to marry a city magistrate, and an English educator.
Growing up poor in Madras, India, Srinivasa Ramanujan Iyengar earns admittance to Cambridge University during WWI, where he becomes a pioneer in mathematical theories with the guidance of his professor, G.H. Hardy.
Two young gentlemen living in 1890s England use the same pseudonym ('Ernest') on the sly, which is fine until they both fall in love with women using that name, which leads to a comedy of mistaken identities.
An Irish rogue uses his cunning and wit to work his way up the social classes of 18th century England, transforming himself from the humble Redmond Barry into the noble Barry Lyndon.
London, June 29th, 1613. The Globe Theater, ran by the famous playwright William Shakespeare, accidentally burns to ashes. Seriously affected, he stops writing and returns to his hometown, where his wife Anne and daughters Judith and Susanna get surprised to hear he intends to stay there definitively, after two decades working in the capital, neglecting his sincere affections for them.
