27

WEDNESDAY

Lambert Hillyer directed only 163 movies. In 1923, he directed his 27th picture, The Shock, starring Master of Disguise Lon Chaney, who made only 154 films. (The Shock was Chaney’s 131st outing.) This melodrama finds Chaney playing the wonderfully named Wilse Dilling, a wheelchair-bound career criminal who is re-evaluating his life. Three years before that film, Hillyer directed his 13th movie, Sand! (note the crucial exclamation point!), starring cowboy legend William S. Hart—who squeezed out just some 80 motion pictures. (Of which Sand! was said to be Woodrow Wilson’s favorite.) In this, Hart’s 62nd film, the squinty-eyed cowpoke plays an unjustly fired railroad stationmaster who, with his trusty horse Fritz, investigates a series of train robberies. One can see why Wilson, who won only two presidential elections, was so enthused. The films screen at 7 p.m. at the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, 545 7th St. SE. $5. (202) 547-6839. (Dave Nuttycombe)