What This Page Contains
On this page you will find a table listing all 33 American silent feature films of 1918 that can be viewed online, mostly on YouTube. For each film on the list, you will find a link to the best online version of the film.
Highlights of Our List of 1918 Online Films
1918’s big news was that Rudolph Valentino appeared in his first starring roles, and all three of his films for this year can be seen on YouTube: A Society Sensation, All Night, and The Married Virgin. It was also in 1918 that Mabel Normand made her first full-length films, which are represented on our list by The Floor Below and Mickey, and Gloria Swanson starred for the first time, in the mostly-lost Station Content.
Representative westerns of 1918 continue to portray the frontier as a stark and forbidding place. In addition to two films by William S. Hart, our list includes Lady of the Dugout, the only time real-life outlaw (and self-promoter) Al Jennings got to play a starring role.
1918 also saw the first production of a Tarzan film, Tarzan of the Apes, starring the physically-impressive Elmo Lincoln. Other highlights of our list include: The Craving, an early feature film addressing alcoholism; The Forbidden City, in which Norma Talmadge plays a pregnant, yet unmarried, Chinese princess; and Among the Cannibal Islands of the South Seas, a real-life documentary produced by the husband-and-wife team of Martin and Osa Johnson, who, the IMDB tells us, travelled 18,000 miles to film never-before-seen tribes.
Want to See American Feature Films from Other Years?
Go to American Feature Films of: 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931
Mabel Normand as Mickey (1918) 
Outlaw Al Jennings flanked by brother
Frank and Corrine Grant in
Lady of the Dugout (1918)
Gloria Swanson in Shifting Sands (1918)
1918 Statistics (per the Library of Congress database):
Number of Features Released: 836
Number Extant (complete and incomplete): 178
Number Completely Lost: 658
1918 American Feature Films Available for Viewing Online
| Title | # Reels | Director | Stars | Genre | Youtube Link | Comments | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All Night | 5 | Paul Powell | Carmel Myers, Rudolph Valentino | Comedy | link | Film needs a bit of restoration. | |
| Amarilly of Clothes Line | 5 | Marshall Neilan | Mary Pickford, Norman Kerry | Comedy | Link | No music. | |
| Among the Cannibal Islands of the South Pacific | n/a | Martin E. Johnson | Martin E. Johnson, Osa Johnson | Documentary | Link | Only 16 minutes of full-length of film. The history of the film is complex: TCM. | |
| Beloved Blackmailer, The | 5 | Dell Henderson | Carlyle Blackwell, Corrine Norris | Comedy | Link | No music. | |
| Birth of a Race, The | 10 | John W. Noble | Ben Hendricks, Sr., John Reinhardt | Drama | Link | No music. | |
| Blue Bird, The | 6 | Maurice Tourneur | Tula Belle, Robin Macdougall | Fantasy | Link I Link II | Link I: traditional, mostly piano accompaniment. Link II: contemporary-style soundtrack. |
|
| Blue Blazes Rawden | 5 | William S. Hart | William S. Hart, Maude George | Western | Link | ||
| Craving, The | 5 | Francis Ford, John Ford | Francis Ford, Mae Gaston | Drama | Link | No music; intertitles in Dutch only. | |
| Floor Below, The | 6 | Clarence C. Badger | Mabel Normand, Tom Moore | Comedy | Link | No music; intertitles in Dutch only. | |
| Forbidden City, The | 6 | Sidney Franklin | Norma Talmadge, Thomas Meighan | Drama | Link | ||
| Ghost of Rosy Taylor, The | 5 | Edward Sloman | Mary Miles Minter | Drama | Link | No music. | |
| He Comes Up Smiling | 5 | Allan Dwan | Douglas Fairbanks, Marjorie Daw | Comedy | Link | Only surviving footage of film (about 11 minutes). | |
| Hearts of the World | 13 | D.W. Griffith | Lillian Gish, Dorothy Gish, Robert Harron | Drama, War | Link I Link II | Link I: with mixed soundtrack of period music, video quality mediocre. Link II: no music, a bit better picture quality. |
|
| Hell Bent | 6 | John Ford | Harey Carey, Neva Gerber | Western | Link | Intertitles in German with English subtitles. | |
| His Birthright | 5 | William Worthington | Sessue Hayakawa | Drama | Link | No music; intertitles in Dutch. | |
| Johanna Enlists | 5 | William Desmond Taylor | Mary Pickford, Monte Blue | Comedy | Link | No music. | |
| Lady of the Dugout, The | 6 | W.S. Van Dyke | Al J. Jennings, Frank Jennings, Corrine Grant | Western | Link | ||
| Little Miss Hoover | 5 | James S. Robinson | Marguerite Clark | Comedy | Link | No music. | |
| Married Virgin, The | 6 | Joseph Maxwell | Vera Sisson, Rudolph Valentino | Drama | Link I Link II | Link I: classical accompaniment. Link II: traditional organ accompaniment. |
|
| Mickey | 7 | F. Richard Jones, James Young | Mabel Normand, George Nichols, Laura La Varnie | Comedy | Link I Link II Link III | Link I: traditional organ accompaniment. Link II: classical soundtrack. Link III: contemporary-style score. |
|
| My Cousin | 5 | Edward José | Enrico Caruso | Comedy | Link | ||
| My Four Years in Germany | 10 | William Nigh | Halbert Brown | War, Drama | Link | ||
| Old Wives for New | 6 | Cecil B. DeMille | Elliot Dexter, Florence Vidor | Drama | Link | ||
| Pair of Silk Stockings, A | 5 | Walter Edwards | Constance Talmadge, Harrison Ford | Comedy | Link | ||
| Riddle Gawne | 5 | William S. Hart | William S. Hart, Katherine MacDonald, Lon Chaney | Western | Link | Only one reel survives, according to IMDB. Link is to archive.org. Surviving footage includes William S. Hart and Lon Chaney footage. No music. | |
| Shifting Sands | 5 | Albert Parker | Gloria Swanson, Joe King | Drama | Link I Link II | Link I: with music, but with ads. Link II: no music or ads. |
|
| Society Sensation, A | 5 | Edmund Mortimer | Carmel Myers, Rudolph Valentino | Comedy | Link | This is the re-released 1924 version, cut to 24-minute short length. | |
| Station Content | 5 | Arthur Hoyt | Gloria Swanson | Drama | Link | Only surviving footage of this film is this 13-minute abridged version. | |
| Stella Maris | 6 | Marshall Neilan | Mary Pickford, Conway Tearle | Drama | Link I Link II | Link I: piano score by Keith Taylor. Link II: classical soundtrack. |
|
| Tarzan of the Apes | 10 | Scott Sidney | Elmo Lincoln, Enid Markey | Adventure | Link I Link II | Alternate period scores. Link II has better general film quality, but aspect ratio is slightly off (too narrow). | |
| Unbeliever, The | 7 | Alan Crosland | Marguerite Courtot, Raymond McKee | Drama, War | Link | No music. | |
| Under Four Flags | 7 | S.L. Rothafel | Armando Diaz, Ferdinand Foch, Douglas Haig, John J. Pershing | Documentary, War | Link | Only 25 minutes of this feature film known to exist. | |
| Whispering Chorus, The | 7 | Cecil B. DeMille | Raymond Hatton, Kathlyn Williams | Drama | Link I Link II | Link I: with music, but with Russian voice-over translation of intertitles. Link II: no music. |
American Feature Films of 1918 Commercially Available,
But Not Yet Uploaded Online
The goal is to get the films listed below uploaded to YouTube. All of these films are in the public domain. However, any musical accompaniment is likely not in the public domain, and may be flagged by YouTube; consequently, you may wish to upload them without any soundtrack (or add your own).
| Title | Director | Stars | Buy From | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Betty Takes a Hand | John Francis Dillon | Olive Thomas | SHOF | SHOF #160 | |
| Broadway Love | Ida May Park | Dorothy Phillips | Oldies.com | Included in DVD set "Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers". | |
| Dream Lady, The | Elsie Jane Wilson | Carmel Myers | Oldies.com | Included in DVD set "Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers". | |
| Eyes of Julia Deep, The | Lloyd Ingraham | Mary Miles Minter, Allan Forrest | Oldies.com | Included with "A Child of the Paris Streets". | |
| Gun Woman, The | Frank Borzage | Texas Guinan, Ed Brady | Oldies.com | Included in "The Texas Guinan Collection". | |
| Little Orphant Annie | Colin Campbell | Colleen Moore | Grapevine Oldies.com | ||
| Safety Curtain, The | Sidney Franklin | Norma Talmadge, Eugene O'Brien | SHOF | SHOF #46 |