Shackled by Film

The overthrow of Czar Nicholas II in Russia was such big news that the then-fledgling art of cinema couldn't help but jump on it immediately and create a couple of dramatizations.

Annette Kellerman, the Australian swimming star of the early 1900s, made a number of films, most of them in the 1910s, which displayed her athletic skills. Most of these films were underwater fantasies, and this one was no exception. Here, Kellerman is Merilla, a mermaid who is the "Queen of the Sea." Not satisfied with being a mermaid, she wants a mortal human body with an immortal soul. She discovers she can achieve this if she saves four human lives.

A young woman who became pregnant from an assault faces legal trouble and scandal after having an abortion.

Adele Moore pressured by her father to choose a husband among four men consults a fortune teller for advice. The crystal ball warns none are suitable so Adele does a flit. Settling in Vermont she opens a store. Business is slow but one day a passing salesman walks in and things begin to look up!

Most of the scenes are laid in a parrot-and-monkey country in South America, a land where "it is always after dinner." The Llano Kid, a Texas bad man, flees there from justice. The consul persuades him to play the long-lost son of a Castilian family, and tattoos a coat of arms on the back of the Kid's hand to make the deception complete. The Kid is taken into the household, trusted and loved by the gladdened mother. For the first time he has a home. The romance develops. And when the time comes to rob and flee he has too much manhood to break the loving mother's heart. The surprise comes when it is revealed that the man the Kid killed in Texas was the real son.

Infatuation is based on Caesar's Wife, a story by Somerset Maugham. Dazzlingly British socialite Viola Morgan falls madly in love with professional soldier Sir Arthur Little at a dinner party. The two marry, and before long Viola has relocated to Egypt with her husband. Soon bored by her hothouse existence, Viola succumbs to the attentions of young British attache Ronald Perry.

An officer in the British Guards takes to drink when a friend and fellow officer convinces the woman they both love that he has another woman.

Making the best of her genteel poverty, our heroine prepares to attend the dance to which she has been invited, and, after surveying the general effect of her plain and somewhat passé attire, goes on her way with a painful self-consciousness to the home of her friend.

Although Esther Whitaker is in love with Caleb Tilden, her sea captain father demands that she marry his first mate. However, Esther's grandfather encourages her and Caleb to marry in secret. After Grandfather Whitaker's death, Esther discovers she is pregnant. The captain, believing that she has disgraced the family, beats Caleb to death (at least that's what he assumes) and drags his daughter along on the ship. Afraid of the consequences, the captain refuses to go home and eventually the crew mutinies.

Pierre Felix, a couturier, makes a $25,000 bet with Ralph Courtland that he can take a girl from the streets, dress her appropriately, and within three months have her accepted into society.

Flighty Helen Halverson decides that she wants to marry Big Jim McKenzie, the boss of the logging camp her father owns, after he is temporarily blinded after he crashes his toboggan into a tree in order to avoid hitting Helen. She convinces her cousin Adele--who is actually also in love with Jim--to get him to propose. Jim's sight returns and he and Helen marry, but on the day their child is to be born, he goes blind again. Frustrated by being married to a blind man, Helen falls in love with his assistant Jean Du Bray. Complications ensue.

An English nobleman is banished from home because of his attachment to a girl "not of his class." He marries the girl, comes to America with her, and a child, John Burton, subsequently the hero of each chapter of this serial, is born to them. 14 chapters.

A Short comedy starring Mabel Normand. The film is considered lost.

During a lawn party at his New York home, steel magnate Theodore Morton claims he is bankrupt as a deterrent to Lord Dormer and the Duke of Medonia, two fortune hunters competing for his niece, Betty. After the suitors depart, unscrupulous Carl Gates is informed by his fiancée, banker's secretary Adele Shelby, that Theodore was lying. Carl pursues Betty, who accepts his proposal with the belief that the marriage will benefit her uncle. During a yachting expedition with Carl, Betty falls overboard and is rescued by architect Tom Waring, who is competing in a race. Tom wins with Betty on board, and a romance develops.

On the promise of marriage, Sylvia Smith, a simple girl from Lone Meadows, follows her lover to the city only to discover that he already has a wife.

Eva and Blanche are inseparable sisters living with a maiden aunt. But Eva marries a suitor named John, to Blanche’s great dismay, and starts married life in a nearby apartment. Blanche lives with the newlyweds for a while, but her constant presence soon irritates the bridegroom. Feeling unwanted, Blanche returns to her aunt’s home despite Eva’s entreaties. Later, when Eva gives birth to a child, the sisters are reconciled.

The defense attorney who was unable to obtain the acquittal of an innocent young man concocts a complicated and diabolical scheme to get revenge on the prosecutor.

An early satirical anthology of socially conscious shorts.

Count Von Herbeck, the chancellor to the Grand Duke of Ehrenstein, is married but keeps the fact secret on account of his high ambitions. His wife, dying, writes him a letter urging him to make their little child a great lady. A lost film.

Based on the poem of the same name by Alexander Pushkin.