I’m always looking for comedies to include in the Internet Archive Top 100, and this is one of them. Molly and Me is a fun little movie about an actress who has to resort to housekeeping and the effect she has on her new boss.

According to IMDb, novelist Frances Marion wrote parts for Marie Dressler when she discovered her down on her luck and ready to accept a housekeeping job. The novel, Molly, Bless Her, the basis of this film, was Marion’s view of what might have happened if Dressler had accepted a job as housemaid.

Topper Returns is a fun bit of fluff. Joan Blondell is a murder victim who, as a ghost, tracks down her killer with hilarious results. It’s particularly nice to see Eddie “Rochester” Anderson on the screen instead of being just the voice of Jack Benny’s assistant on his long-running radio show.

I always think that the Internet Archive Top 100, despite its important and serious films, could always use more comedy. This movie isn’t very high up the list, but at least it made it.

This French Revolution thriller, sometimes called Reign of Terror, stars Robert Cummings as Charles D’Aubigny, who searches for Maximilien Robespierre’s black book containing the names of those he intends to denounce and have executed.

I guess this is one of those old Hollywood movies where a very American actor is supposed to look like he comes from another background, because I never thought Cummings seemed very French. But Leonard Maltin and the IMDb users both rate it as a solid movie, so it ranks in the Internet Archive Top 100.

Here’s another Alfred Hitchcock entry, sometimes called The Girl Was Young. It touches a lot of his common themes; an innocent man in the wrong place at the wrong time has to dodge the police while he finds the real killer. In this case, he’s assisted by a beautiful, young, innocent police constable’s daughter.

Hitchcock’s cameo comes at the 16-minute mark as he holds a tiny camera outside the courthouse. His crane shot near the end is legendary. And this solid all-British production is a worthy entry in the Internet Archive Top 100.

This entry is odd is so many ways. The Curious Adventures of Mr. Wonderbird is an adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale of The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep. Production on the French animated film stopped suddenly in 1948, and its producer released it unfinished without the approval of its director or writer. This English-language version was released in 1952 starring Peter Ustinov as the bird, who narrates the story. Decades later, its director Paul Grimault acquired the rights to the film and finished it for a 1980 release. And the copy in the Internet Archive Feature Films collection is strangely misnamed “1989 summer drum party”.

Wikipedia writes that this movie is today regarded as a masterpiece of French animation and has been cited by the Japanese directors Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata as an influence. I just think it’s a fun cartoon movie, and I’m glad that its IMDb rating was enough to get it into the IA Top 100.