This WWI home-front comedy is the earliest surviving film of King Vidor, who would later go on to make such classics as The Big Parade and The Crowd. A two-reeler, it's a propaganda comedy involving a little boy who can't wait to go fight against the Kaiser, and who sets an unrelentingly patriotic (and militaristic) example for his draft-age, feminized brother and peace-lovin' mother.
Watch the official Bud's Recruit 1918 trailer in HD below.
Trying to win the Three C's railroad line for his home town of Topaz, Colorado, Nicholas "Nick" Tarvin journeys to India to secure the famed jewel known as the Naulahka, which he plans to present to Mrs.
Prince Sami comes from Nigeria and is an uncivilized "nature boy." He is sent to the highly civilized court of Duchess Maria of Arragon, where he initially causes chaos.
In order to help her poverty-stricken family, Jonnie Consadine, a strong-willed young woman from the Blue Ridge Mountains, comes to the city and takes a job in a mill, while her uncle, Pros Passmore, continues his endless search for a lost silver mine.
Ellen Shannon, the daughter of self-made Irish politician Pat Shannon, is engaged to Ted Breslin, but because Pat began his career as a menial laborer, Ted's mother, Mrs.
After leaving her sweetheart Jed Bronson, and small country town life, Minnie Wills (Olive Thomas) obtains a job as a model in a stylish Chicago shop and soon attracts the attention of Moncure Kelts, a wealthy playboy.
Hero Henry Court (Herbert Rawlinson) is very much his parents' child, having inherited the predominant character traits of both his go-getting father and his shy, retiring mother.
