A.H. Busby

The River of Romance

Jim Crosby, the product of a broken home, becomes a gangster and goes to prison. Meanwhile, Ann Payton, an heiress, converts a saloon into a mission. She is engaged to her father's secretary, Temple Vaughn, a gambler. Jim is released from prison and seeks shelter at the mission. Temple becomes indebted to gambler Phil Johnson and is forced to arrange a crooked poker game involving some of his wealthy friends. Jim overhears the plot and, realizing that Temple is Ann's fiancé, robs the poker game and puts a check Temple forged into Temple's own pocket.

A fortune-hunting follies star Gloria Dawn ( Olive Thomas ), begins to question her engagement to wealthy Peter Shaw after meeting an amnesiac young man who stumbles into her apartment one night. The doctor instructs that he not be moved, so Gloria nurses the stranger back to health, although his memory fails to return. Gloria falls in love with her patient and, upon discovering that he is millionaire sportsman Jerry O'Farrell, rushes home to restore his identity, only to find that he has gone. Amnesia continues to plague Jerry, and he soon forgets both Gloria's name and address. While he is attending a show at the follies, a fire breaks out, and Gloria, recognizing her lover in the audience, rushes to save him. Meanwhile, Shaw, who has discovered Gloria's feelings for Jerry, accosts her. Jerry, who has finally regained his memory, intercedes and rescues Gloria, and the two fall in love.

Nydia, an Early Christian girl seemingly singled out for exclusive persecution by the despotic empress of Rome. The empress' ire seems to have been aroused by the fact that her erstwhile sweetheart, handsome centurion Caius (a very young Ernest Truex) is in love with Nydia.

Motion picture actress Doria Dane (Edna Goodrich) gives up her career to play muse to sculptor George Steele (Herbert Evans). With Doria's help, Steele overcomes his Bohemian excesses and stays away from the influence of the jealous but wealthy Mrs. Schuyler (Miriam Folger). He finally achieves success, but he also begins to neglect Doria. When she catches him kissing the dreaded Mrs. Schuyler, Doria decides to leave him. But when she goes to his studio to drop off her farewell note, she discovers another sculptor, Harry North, copying one of Steele's masterpieces. Later she comes over to Steele's studio and, in front of a crowd of people, smashes the statue to bits. Then she takes them over to North's studio and explains that she switched the two statues, and reveals North as a fraud. At the base of the real statue she has left a letter of reconciliation to Steele.

Lelia Crofton, a Louisiana belle of the 1860s, loves Burleigh Mavor. By chance, she sees one of her father's black stablemen making love to a neighbor's maid, whom she supposed was white. The incident shocks Lelia and leaves a great impression upon her. When she rejects suitor Steve Daubeney, he threatens to expose a damaging secret about her mother, whom she has never met. Remembering the incident with the neighbor's maid, Lelia worries that her mother might be black, and when Daubeney learns of her fears, he leads her to believe that they are well-founded.