The House That Shadows Built

No reviews or information concerning the release date were located for this film, which May have been made only for promotional purposes and not for theatrical exhibition. Although the film credits state that it was copyrighted in 1931, the film is not listed in the copyright entries. According to a Hollywood Reporter news item, in 1939, Paramount was preparing, under the same title, "an original by Will Irwin which delineates the history of the motion picture industry and the part played by Adolph Zukor." No other information about this 1939 film has been located.
       The 1931 film includes short scenes of the following actors and films: Sarah Bernhardt in Queen Elizabeth, produced in 1912 in France; J. K. Hackett, playing a dual role in The Prisoner of Zenda (1913); Dustin Farnum in The Squaw Man (1914); Mary Pickford in A Good Little Devil (1914); Geraldine Farrar in Carmen (1915); Robert Edeson and Theodore Roberts in The Call of the North (1914); Blanche Sweet in The Captive (1915); Vivian Martin and Jack Holt in Giving Becky a Chance (1917); George Beban in an unidentified film; Olga Petrova and Mahlon Hamilton in The Undying Flame (1917); Jack Pickford and Robert Gordon in Huck and Tom (1918); Sessue Hayakawa, Fannie Ward and Jack Dean in The Cheat (1915); Marie Doro in The Heart of Nora Flynn (1916); Elliott Dexter, Kathlyn Williams and Raymond Hatton in The Whispering Chorus (1918); Dorothy Gish in Battling Jane (1918); Douglas Fairbanks in Headin' South (1918); Mary Pickford in The Little American (1917); Elliott Dexter in The Squaw Man (1918); Gloria Swanson and Elliott Dexter in For Better, for Worse (1919); John Barrymore in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920); Charles Ray in Homer Comes Home (1920); Lon Chaney, Betty Compson, Thomas Meighan and J. M. Dumont in The Miracle Man (1919); Lillian Gish in True Heart Susie (1919); Gloria Swanson and Thomas Meighan in Male and Female (1919); Betty Compson in The Little Minister (1921); Wallace Reid and Theodore Roberts in The Roaring Road (1919); Mae Murray in On with the Dance (1920); Gareth Hughes and May McAvoy in Sentimental Tommy (1921); Rudolph Valentino and Agnes Ayres in The Sheik (1921); Conrad Nagel, Bebe Daniels, William Boyd and Wallace Reid in Nice People (1922); The Covered Wagon (1923); Betty Bronson and Mary Brian in Peter Pan (1924); William S. Hart and Kathleen O'Connor in Wild Bill Hickok (1923); Adolphe Menjou and Florence Vidor in The Grand Duchess and the Waiter (1926); Noah Beery, Billie Dove and Jack Holt in The Light of Western Stars (1925); The Ten Commandments (1923); Wallace Beery and Raymond Hatton in Behind the Front (1926); Pola Negri and Rod La Rocque in Forbidden Paradise (1924); Richard Dix in The Vanishing American (1925); Clara Bow in It (1927); Harold Lloyd and Constantine Romanoff in The Kid Brother (1927); Emil Jannings and Lya de Putti in Variété, produced in Germany (1925); Ronald Colman, Ralph Forbes and Noah Beery in Beau Geste (1926); George Bancroft in Underworld (1927); Gary Cooper, Charles Rogers and Richard Arlen in Wings (1929) and George M. Cohan, George Beban, Elsie Ferguson, Dorothy Dalton, Marguerite Clark, Billie Burke, Ethel Clayton, Lila Lee, Pauline Frederick, Bryant Washburn and Irene Castle in unidentified films (see AFI Catalog of Feature Films, 1911-20 and 1921-30 for information on the above titles).
       Paramount players, who appear in photographs as stars of the 1931-32 season, include Harold Lloyd, George Bancroft, Nancy Carroll, the Four Marx Brothers, Charles Rogers, Clive Brook, Phillips Holmes, Sylvia Sidney, Eleanor Boardman, Frances Dee, Jackie Searl, Kay Francis, Judith Wood, Regis Toomey, Peggy Shannon, Jackie Coogan, Lilyan Tashman, Eugene Pallette, Anna May Wong, Juliette Compton, Stuart Erwin, William Boyd, Miriam Hopkins, Wynne Gibson, Jack Oakie, Ginger Rogers, Robert Coogan, Carmen Barnes, Charlie Ruggles, Skeets Gallagher, Mitzi Green, Richard Arlen, Carole Lombard, Fredric March, Claudette Colbert, Paul Lukas, Tallulah Bankhead, Gary Cooper, Ruth Chatterton, Marlene Dietrich and Maurice Chevalier.
       Marquees announce the following 1931-32 Paramount films, some of which were never made and other listing actors who were not in the final film: Marlene Dietrich in An Entirely Different Woman [which was never produced by Paramount; it was to have been based on the German novel Eine Ganz Andere Frau by Georg Fröschl about a woman whose character changes evilly after a swindler donates blood in a transfusion]; No One Man, from the Rupert Hughes novel; Daughter of the Dragon, with Anna May Wong, Warner Oland and Sessue Hayakawa; 24 Hours, with Clive Brook, Kay Francis, Eugene Pallette [who May not have been in the final film] and Regis Toomey; Girls About Town, with Kay Francis, Lilyan Tashman and Eugene Pallette; Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Nancy Carroll in Personal Maid; Claudette Colbert in Uncertain Woman [which was to have been based on Edgar Wallace's novel The Girl from Scotland Yard, but was never produced, although Paramount did use the title of the novel in a later production]; The Road to Reno, with Charles Rogers, Carmen Barnes [who was not in the final film] and Lilyan Tashman; The Round-Up with Eugene Pallette, Stuart Erwin, Skeets Gallagher and Frances Dee [which was not produced by Paramount until 1941]; Silence, with Clive Brook, Marjorie Rambeau and Peggy Shannon; A Farewell to Arms with Gary Cooper and Eleanor Boardman [Helen Hayes replaced Eleanor Boardman in the final film]; My Sin, with Tallulah Bankhead and Fredric March; Ladies of the Big House; Huckleberry Finn, with Jackie Cooper, Mitzi Green, Junior Durkin and Jackie Searl; George Bancroft in Rich Man's Folly; The Man with Red Hair [which was to be a horror film based on a novel by Hugh Walpole, but was never produced by Paramount]; The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, filmed by Ernest B. Schoedsack [which was not made by Paramount until 1935, although that film used footage shot in India by Schoedsack in 1931]; and Ruth Chatterton in Tomorrow and Tomorrow.
       Extended scenes are shown that were shot for the following films: An American Tragedy with Phillips Holmes, Sylvia Sidney and Frances Dee; Secrets of a Secretary with Claudette Colbert, Herbert Marshall and Georges Metaxa; Sooky with Jackie Cooper and Robert Coogan; Murder by the Clock with William Boyd, Lilyan Tashman, Regis Toomey and Irving Pichel; the Four Marx Brothers in Monkey Business, in a scene based on their 1924 revue I'll Say She Is, during which the brothers audition separately for a role in a play by imitating Maurice Chevalier performing a song (most of the dialogue is in rhymed couplets); Ruth Chatterton in Stepdaughters of War, directed by Dorothy Arzner [which was never released and May not have been finished]; Maurice Chevalier in Ernst Lubitsch's The Smiling Lieutenant with Claudette Colbert, Charlie Ruggles and Miriam Hopkins.