Little Lord Fauntleroy was the first film produced by Selznick International Pictures, created by David O. Selznick when he left Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It’s about an American boy who is the long-lost heir of an English fortune. He is sent to live with a cold and unsentimental earl who refuses to allow the boy’s mother to live with him in his castle. Don’t worry, things get better.

Mary Pickford had performed in the silent version of this story in 1921, and Selznick bought the rights from her before filming. It’s just another iconic tale in the Internet Archive Top 100.

Rhythm and Blues Revue is just that – a musical variety show filmed at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem. And what a cast of greats! Lionel Hampton, Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan, Nipsey Russell, Big Joe Turner, Nat ‘King’ Cole, Mantan Moreland, Cab Calloway, and many more.

The chance to see all these performers in their prime, (particularly Calloway’s “Minnie the Moocher” at the 62½-minute mark), and to get a glimpse of what a really good night at the Apollo must have been like, those are great reasons to put this time capsule in the Internet Archive Top 100.

There’s a good amount of Leslie Howard films in the Internet Archive Top 100. Here he’s matched with Bette Davis, who was a write-in nominee for the best actress Oscar after she was surprisingly left off the official ballot that year.

Of Human Bondage, one of the last movies made before the Hays Code became more strictly enforced, was about a club-footed artist who falls in love with a cold-hearted, manipulative waitress. It’s based on the 1915 novel of the same title by W. Somerset Maugham. The film was remade in 1946 and again in 1964.

Set just before the start of World War II, Night Train to Munich tells the story of an inventor and his daughter who are kidnapped by the Gestapo after the Nazis march into Prague. A British secret service agent follows them, disguised as a senior German army officer pretending to woo the daughter over to the Nazi cause.

This was the second appearance by the characters Charters and Caldicott (played by Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne), all in movies written by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder. They also appeared in Crook’s Tour (1941), and Millions Like Us (1943). Their first appearance was in a movie much higher up the list in the Internet Archive Top 100.

The Miracle of Marcelino is one of the few movies in the Internet Archive Top 100 that is dubbed from a foreign language into English. It’s a Spanish movie (originally Marcelino pan y vino) about an orphan in a monastery who gives a piece of bread to an old wooden Jesus figure, which eats it. The statue becomes the boy’s best friend and begins to give him religious instruction.

According to Wikipedia, the film remains one of the most famous and successful Spanish films ever made (winning the best film award by Spain’s Cinema Writers Circle), and one of the first Spanish films to become successful in the US. Child actor Pablito Calvo won a special mention at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival.