Jimmy Martin, king of the motorcycle speedsters, visits the Kingdom of Mandavia for a race. There he is persuaded to impersonate the king by a traitor, Rodolph D'Henri, who intends to annex part of Mandavia for neighboring Selmarnia. The real king is in jail. D'Henri's plot is successful until Martin falls in love with Princess Margaret of Alvernia. Then he discloses his true identity, releases the real king, exposes the traitor, earns knighthood, and marries Margaret.
The one was a venturer - the other an adventurer - the one a man who wanted to see adventure, but who had never been beyond the city limits - the other a man who had seen adventure in all parts of the world, and who assured the venturer that things were just as monotonous every place in the world as in the city. So they met, each seeking for the unconventional, on a New York street, and dined together as men out of luck, with two cents between them - and still nothing happened. They both had credit at the hotel. Then into their lives came the feminine influence - a sweet girl who lived in a house which was irrevocably a household. The adventurer hesitated - he had yet to satisfy his longing for the incalculable. Suddenly love changed the venturer into an adventurer, and settled the adventurer into a venturer.
After returning home to his long-estranged mother upon a request from her deathbed, a man raised by his parents in an orphanage has to confront the childhood memories that have long haunted him.
A melodrama about a painter who is infected with syphilis, refuses treatment, turns to the use instead of narcotics, and withers away.
On the lam, criminal Alonzo hides in the circus as The Armless Wonder—a performer who uses his feet to hurl knives. Alonzo keeps the arms he really has concealed to hide his identity. Meanwhile, ringmaster's daughter Nanon has a phobia of being touched by men, but is romantically pursued by not only Alonzo but the strongman Malabar. Alonzo's desperation to remain with Nanon will only end in tragedy.
Three sideshow performers form a conspiracy known as "The Unholy Three" - a ventriloquist, midget, and strongman working together to commit a series of robberies.
A magician seeks vengeance upon the man who paralyzed him and the illegitimate daughter he sired with the magician's wife.
A despairing clown suffering a broken heart and a self-indulgent count who uncontrollably laughs learn to help each other with their problems, but both fall in love with the same young woman.
Chaney plays two roles: mad scientist Arthur Lamb and Lamb's "experiment", known only as the Ape Man. This hideous creature was the result of Lamb's attempts to transplant animal glands into human beings. A lost film.
Blizzard, deranged from a childhood operation in which both his legs were needlessly amputated after an accident, becomes a vicious criminal, and eventually mob leader of the San Francisco underworld.
After a baron steals his scientific discoveries, runs away with his wife, and slaps him in public, a man joins a Parisian circus sideshow as a clown whose act consists of being slapped repeatedly and becomes infatuated with a showgirl colleague whose father intends to marry her off to the baron.
Gerald Stanley (John Gilbert) is an English gentleman who is engaged to Beatrice Joyce (Alma Frances). But Stanley's personality changes whenever he drinks, and his brother (who also loves Beatrice) uses this to his advantage.
A banker, after a prophetic meeting with a Gypsy fortune teller, becomes delusional as he searches for a trunk which the seer has told him holds the key to either his happiness or his death. This film is considered lost.
In a provincial Spanish town, during the mid-nineteenth century, Manuela is sold as a dancing girl to a strolling musician. In their wanderings, she meets Don Bartolome, who left his poor father Don Luis to become a highwayman. Bartolome falls in love with Manuela and takes her with him after killing the musician. When they meet Osmund Manvers, an English squire, Bartolome wants to use Manuela to rob him, but Manvers rescues Manuela from a gang of drifters and carries her into the country. Later, Manuela stabs and kills Bartolome after he threatens her. Manuela flees and Manvers searches for her. When Don Luis learns about Bartolome's death, he challenges Manvers to a duel.
A peasant girl goes to great lengths to protect her child in 19th century Vienna. The film is considered lost, and only four minutes of footage are known to remain.
An upper class melodrama.
Sisters Phyllis and Alithea are kept in the countryside until they reach the age of eighteen when their guardian, the Squire, takes them to London. Planning to marry them off to rich older men for mercenary reason he is thwarted when the girls both fall in love with more suitable men. When the Squire works to split the couples, the girls resort to subterfuge to gain their happiness.
A young widow and her baby find refuge with a miserly backslider after being evicted. While the miser is away, criminals invade, mistreating the mother. The miser returns, pleading for their safety, and upon their rescue, his adoption of the baby reveals his true Christian nature, despite his church absence.
Lord Trevor and his ward, Nan Tremain are prominent figures in London society, as well as clandestine agents of the government. With the help of wealthy East Indian, Abdul, who posed as Trevor’s body servant, Nan dressed as a foreign noblewoman, recovers the plans of certain coast fortifications which had fallen into the hands of double agent, Col. Pfaff and would have been of irredeemable loss to her country had they reached another country.
A recalcitrant thief vies with a duplicitous Mongol ruler for the hand of a beautiful princess.