Marlene Dietrich singing I Belong to Glasgow.

Oliver Hardy wearing two kilts stitched together. And Charlie Chaplin enjoying a quiet holiday at Turnberry.

These and other largely forgotten Scottish episodes in the lives of the stars of early Holywood have been revealed as part of the fifth-anniversary Hippodrome Festival of Silent Cinema.

The stars can be seen in a series of pictures from The Herald's archives to be exhibited as part of the festival's 2015 programme, which has been launched at the refurbished Bo'ness Hippodrome.

The highlight of this year's line-up is a showing of the 1927 silent film Annie Laurie starring Lillian Gish as a young woman caught between the warring Campbells and MacDonalds at Glencoe. The award-winning composer and violinist Shona Mooney has created a beautiful new score for the film, which she will perform on the night.

Other highlights of the festival, which runs from March 18-22, include a screening of Salt for Svanetia, a 1930 film about a remote Russian community which has a new score by the Edinburgh folk band Moishe's Bagel, a pop-up cinema event at the Bo'ness and Kinneil Railway and a documentary about Chaplin's Scottish co-star Eric Campbell made by Kevin MacDonald of Last King of Scotland fame.

The photography exhibition, which has been curated by Herald contributor Alison Kerr, features a number of striking pictures of some of the biggest stars of silent cinema during their visits to Scotland. They include one of Laurel and Hardy in Giffnock in 1947 during a run at the Empire in Glasgow. The duo, who caused scenes of mayhem at the Central Hotel during a previous visit in 1932, appeared in tartan outfits, although Hardy reportedly had to have two kilts stitched together.

The pictures also includ one of Chaplin in Turnberry, Dietrich arriving at Glasgow Airport (she sang I Belong to Glasgow while standing on top of her limo after her one-woman show at the Alhambra) and Lillian Gish herself during her British stage debut at the King's Theatre in Glasgow in 1936.

Alison Strauss, the festival director, said the programme for the fifth year of the festival was the most ambitious yet. "Silent cinema is often characterised as crude and unsophisticated," she said," but again and again we're reminded by the films that we show that so much of the output has great merit."

Ian Scott, chairman of the Falkirk Community Trust, which runs the Hippodrome cinema, also said he was pleased that the work commissioned at the festival would be seen across Scotland and beyond. Moishe's Bagel will go on tour with Salt For Svanetia and Annie Laurie, with Mooney's new score, will be shown at the Barbican in London on April 26.

"It is a particular pleasure to be celebrating the festival's fifth birthday," said Mr Scott, "as Scotland's only silent film festival continues to grow on the national cultural stage."

For more information, visit hippfest.co.uk