Margaret recorded the titles of 62 individual films or serials in her diary for 1916. Of these, 36 are thought to be lost entirely, two exist in part, and 23 exist substantially or fully complete. Here is a selection of some of the films that do exist, for your viewing pleasure: Mary Pickford in Cinderella, which Margaret saw on 22 January 1916, William S. Hart in The Return of 'Draw' Egan, which she saw on 1 December 1916 (along with Douglas Fairbanks in Manhattan Madness, another extant film); and Charlie Chaplin in The Pawnbroker, which she saw on 25 October 1916.
Margaret's children recalled that Pickford, Fairbanks and Hart were their mother's favourite stars of early years. It is not clear whether she held the same affection for Charlie Chaplin, though she took the trouble to record The Pawnbroker as 'v. good' in her diary, and her son Fred preserved the souvenir programme he was given when taken to see Chaplin's The Kid (1922) at the age of three.
Before The Show
A typical single-feature programme of 1916 would have started with an assortment of newsreels, an episode of a serial such as The Exploits of Elaine or The Iron Claw, or a short comedy. In the case of the Triangle films Margaret was fond of, the comedy would have been a Mack Sennett production.
It appears that she did not care for slapstick, as she did not mention any of these supporting films in her diary, aside from The Pawnbroker. By this point, Chaplin and some of his fellow comedians such as Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle were so popular that their films were frequently promoted over the features they ostensibly supported.
The following selection of newsreel items is representative of the kind of fare Margaret would have seen - a combination of local stories, war footage, and frivolous items designed to distract from the current international malaise. Most would have derived from Australia or Britain.