Born with an artistic temperament, Joe Leigh feels keenly the bitterness and drudgery of life on a small farm and longs to get away from it. Jabez, his uncle, who owns the farm, is a hard, matter-of-fact man, utterly out of sympathy with his nephew's ambitions.
Captain of the Yale football team, Paul Potter becomes engaged to his small-town Indiana sweetheart Sylvia Castle but once in the big city he becomes involved with married society girl Muriel Evers and finds Sylvia too provincial, ending their engagement. In time Sylvia meets alcoholic actor, Henry Leamington, who encourages her to become an actress while she helps him get sober. In New York she finds success and becomes reacquainted with Paul for whom she still has feelings, but comes to realize he is a lout and returns to Henry.
Andrew Gibson inherits problems when his father dies and leaves shares of his piano manufacturing business to his workmen. To add to his troubles, Andrew's girl, Nora Gorodna, is being pursued by José Ferra, one of the workmen; and Lila Normand, a society girl, tricks Andrew into proposing.
In Africa a typist is framed for killing a diamond smuggler who betrayed her father.
A young woman of humble origins hides her family's lack of wealth and prestige from her boarding school friends.
In Paris an Apache dancer weds his ex-fiancée's sister for revenge but learns to love.
The daughter of a count and the son of a shoemaker, both Hungarian, fall in love in America. As they're about to marry, the young woman is called back to Europe. When her betrothed goes after her, difficulties ensue.
Lisza Tapenko (Bara) is governess in the household of Prince Arbasoff (Charles Clary). After the death of his wife, Lisza and he become involved, but because of the difference in social station he refuses to marry her. Lisza's former lover, Vassya (Richard Ordynski), convinces her to join the revolution and she goes off to the group headquarters in Switzerland. But the prince's little boy begs to have Lisza come back, so he goes after her and marries her.
Based on the Rupert Hughes novel, this film concerns the German atrocities committed in Belgium at the beginning of the Great War.
Marion Clark, a manicurist, is unimpressed by the wealthy but dissipated men who frequent her shop, preferring city editor Dick Strong, who lives in her boardinghouse. Dick's sister Gladys, however, is intrigued by the wilder side of life in New York and allows one of the boarders to take her to a lively party.
Japanese poet Akira living in Tokyo, loves American Ruth Vale, who was placed in the care of Akira's father when her missionary parents died. Ruth returns Akira's affections until she meets Edward, but the American proves an unfaithful husband. Three years later, Ruth is gravely ill while Edward amuses himself with his new lover, Adrienne Chester, but Akira comforts the dying woman with the promise that he will protect her little daughter Blossom.
Mike Kildare, a swaggering youth from New York City's Bowery at the turn of the century, comes to the defense of Mamie Rose, a mender in a secondhand clothing shop, when his own gang of Irish-Americans insult her.
A prosperous small-town peddler accedes to his family's wish to move from their secure existence to the uncertainty of New York City. It proves fruitless and eventually his kin sees the error of their ways and return to their true home.
Rethna works hard to organize her fellow factory employees against the miserly, uncaring owner, Henry Burke. Then, realizing that she needs money to fight Burke, she begins an affair with his unscrupulous son Harry.
Linnie Carter, a cabaret entertainer, struggles to remain innocent in the midst of the fast life. Harry Sullivan, a gangster, becomes attentive to Linnie and asks her to marry him and, believing that his intentions are sincere, she accepts. When Linnie's friend Irma Wood and her husband Billy, who plays a clown in a cabaret act, discover that Harry has no intention of marrying Linnie and that Linnie is in danger, they rescue her from a phony marriage ceremony and force her to face the truth about Harry.
Ezra Hickman, of Kankakee, is a political aspirant. At a reception in Washington with his wife and daughter Amy he meets the Ambassador of Selim Bey, the ruler of a small European kingdom, Vergania. The Ambassador, seeking an American girl for his ruler, paints a glowing picture of Vergania to Hickman's wife, with the result that she persuades her husband to accept the American Consulate at. Vergania. Amy, the daughter, is enamored of Lieutenant Brice of the U.S. Navy, and reluctantly she agrees to leave him and go with her family.
Returning to House of a Thousand Candles a mystery unfolds involving two lookalike girls...or is there only one very crafty one?
You would think that the death of his wife through his dissipation and neglect would have brought Jack Moreland to his senses. Instead he is more dissipated, and deserts his child, Clara, who is taken by her uncle, Harold Moreland, and brought up in ignorance of her father's existence.
Rebecca Butler, tired of poverty, takes a job in a Broadway chorus line and determines to marry a millionaire.
Living in adjoining homes at Oakdale, Hal Oilman and Alice Blanchard are childhood friends and playmates. Some years later. Hal goes to college, and while there makes a bitter enemy of Bert Peyson by exposing him as a card cheat and a thief.