The Broadway Peacock

When jealousy and envy lead Mary Vantyne to make a foolish decision and commit an impulsive act she sets off a series of events that nearly bring heartbreak to all those in her circle.

John Merrick and Vilma Walden, who fall in love at an embassy fundraiser in Vienna before World War I. Vilma's brother, Carl, who is a war veteran, poses as a rival for Vilma's affections. When war erupts, John requests a transfer to the Italian front, where he confronts Carl, who had borrowed his aircraft for a mission. John is devastated to learn the pilot he downed was actually Carl, leading him to announce he will no longer kill.

Orphaned sisters Kate and Irene are separated as children, but each keeps half of their mother's wedding ring. Years later Irene marries John West, the head of a munitions camp. Kate, as fate would have it, happens to run the saloon in the camp and she and Irene become friends, but neither has any idea that the other is her long-lost sister. Matters take a turn for the worse, however, when Kate starts a romance with Cliff, Irene's adopted brother--a relationship that Irene strongly disapproves of. Complications ensue.

Wealthy New York contractor Wilton Demarest falls victim to the wiles of beautiful adventuress Mazora. Soon, he becomes addicted to drugs, neglects his wife and child, and his business is on the verge of ruin. By chance he meets his double, western mining engineer Martin Stanley. Demarest, half mad due to his drug addiction, conceives the fantastic idea of having Stanley take his place in the world enabling him to indulge in his degraded desires. Stanely, penniless and alone in the world accepts the proposition despite his reservations. Demarest drops into oblivion and Stanley picks up the scattered threads of his life, both in business and at home. The "at home" part is what causes complications.

Rich wastrel Baron Chevrial fritters his days and nights away pursuing a series of young lovelies and playing with their affections. He is smitten with the charms of Rosa, dancer of the Opera Comique, but marries the prominent Therese Beauchamp while still remaining involved with Rosa. Eventually a new woman enters his life and for a time he is oblivious to everything else until Rosa reenters his sphere.

When a train crash kills Horace Barney, the heir to a fortune that his doctors and guardians were planning to extort the unscrupulous trio quickly substitute his double Jack Trevor who by chance was on the same locomotive but knocked unconscious. Once awakened, Jack realizes the duplicity but plays along to try and foil the plot and save the estate for Barney’s cousin Helen who is the true heir and with whom he has fallen in love.

Loutish Teddy Brant feeling trapped by his marriage and family commitments to the sweet Rose and their infant daughter Helen fakes his suicide and embarks on a dissolute life. Thinking herself free Rose remarries, and time passes contently. Years later, Teddy, now a hopeless derelict, wanders the country straying one night into the waiting room of a train station. He sees a young girl being accosted by an elderly gentleman who tries to entice her home. Teddy thinks nothing of the incident until he finds a purse lying on the seat and learns that the girl is his daughter Helen. Teddy hastens after them and in the ensuing fight, strangles Helen's assailant and then flees. Helen is arrested for the murder but is acquitted when Teddy staggers into the police station and confesses to the crime.

While engaged in battle, Pierre Duval, a French soldier, stumbles onto the mortally wounded Count de Morave. Before dying, the count begs Pierre to deliver some family jewels and papers to the Vicomte Raoul de Reyntiens. At home, Pierre places the jewels in a box that also contains a necklace given to Margot, his wife, by the Duke D'Auberg. While stealing the box, Lazare, a war correspondent who witnessed Pierre's scene with the count, attacks and kills Margot. Found guilty of the crime, Pierre is sentenced to life imprisonment but is pardoned after performing a dangerous jailhouse rescue. Mavis, his daughter, who has been adopted by the duke, falls in love with the poor vicomte but is courted by Lazare, now posing as the Count de Morave. To win her love, Lazare gives her some of the stolen jewels, including the duke's necklace, but when Pierre sees the necklace later, he exposes Lazare and wins retribution.

Nekhludoff, a Russian nobleman serving on a jury, discovers that the young girl on trial, Katusha, is someone he once seduced and abandoned and that he himself bears responsibility for reducing her to crime. He sets out to redeem her and himself in the process.

After being disinherited by their wealthy father for their wild and irresponsible ways, two brothers embark on vastly different paths. One turns to crime and the other follows the straight and narrow falling in love along the way. When their paths cross again both find their lives in danger and only one will emerge safely.

A woman writes about her sister's tragedy, vowing to help others in similar situations: Because Bettina longs to leave her country home, her loving mother sends her and her serious-minded elder sister to London, accepting their aunt's invitation to visit and allow Bettina to be introduced to society. The girls' dressmaker steals the aunt's photograph and sends it to a woman who, disguised as their aunt, leads the girls to a brothel. After the elder sister escapes, aided by her concerned male companion, she races in a cab to her aunt's home, but is frustrated in her attempt to rescue Bettina by her aunt's infirm state, the inefficiency of the police, and her own inability to remember the location of the house. She finds her cab driver, but he is drunk and soon dies in an accident. After falling ill, the sister, convinced by a dream that Bettina has died, resolves to devote her life to saving other women.

Warren Schuyler, a wealthy widower in a small Eastern town, is highly-respected until the citizens are financially ruined by devaluation of the oil stock he sold them. His daughter Ellen's New York socialite fiance' Roy Phelps deserts her after her father dies, but fellow townsman John Barrett comes to her aid, and she marries him out of gratitude. After three years of irritation from her mother-in-law, she again meets Roy and is persuaded to leave her husband and child, but on perceiving Roy's fraudulence, and following a serious illness, she reunites with John.

Defying her obdurate Colonel father Betty Lewis elopes with Bob Hale. When Bob is killed in an automobile accident, the colonel discovers Betty is pregnant and after the birth cruelly tells Betty that the baby died while placing the child in an orphanage. When Betty later marries Ken Tyler she stays silent about her previous marriage, at the colonel's request. One day while visiting an orphanage with her sister, Barbara, who hopes to adopt, she finds her own daughter. Taking her home she admits to Ken the child's true parentage. Angered at first, he is persuaded by his own mother and accepts the child.

Poverty forces Jill Mackie to work in a department store, where she falls in love with its owner, Charles Hemingway. They form an illicit alliance when Mrs. Hemingway refuses to grant Charles a divorce. Eventually, Hemingway becomes ill and dies, leaving Jill a sum of money. She leaves the country and falls in love with a young man to whom she confides her past, but breaks with him when he suggests that they make a similar arrangement.

Dishonored by playboy John Radon, simple country girl Stella Dean flees to the city to hide her shame. Leading a disreputable life she eventually obtains great wealth as a courtesan known as the Black Nightingale. One day she meets Milton Taylor, an artist from her hometown who knew her when she was an innocent, and he asks her to pose as his model of the Madonna. Stella agrees and feels cleansed by the experience, however when Milton discovers Stella's reputation he begins to drink and leaves her, his illusions shattered. Repentant, Stella converts her mansion into a refuge for foundlings and returns to her hometown of Pleasantville reconciling with Milton.

A village schoolteacher, unaware that Eben, the village carpenter, is in love with her, marries a surveyor and has a son, David. Eben, distraught at losing her, goes away, and he returns years later to find that David, now an orphan, is running away from his cruel foster father, the squire. Eben befriends David, and when the town is destroyed by a storm the two escape harm. An epilog shows David 25 years later as a successful businessman, happily married, helping to rebuild the town.

Paul Bonard an artist, loses his memory when he receives a blow on the head from one of two apaches fighting over Wildcat, a sultry stepper in a cafe. He becomes an apache himself, falls in love with Wildcat and paints her portrait--his masterpiece. Wildcat learns Paul's identity and restores him to his family, though realizing that she will lose him. Surgery restores Paul's memory, but some subconscious force guides him back to the cafe and Wildcat's love.

Early sound short starring Lionel Atwill.

Hoping to reconcile her divorced parents, Norris Gradley remains with her father, Giles, after he marries another woman. The new Mrs. Gradley snubs and mistreats Norris, who earns money by disguising herself as a boy and playing the violin at dances. Claude Wolcott, employed by Giles to drill oil wells, falls in love with Norris.

After losing his factory job, virtuoso violinist Tommy Breen is inspired by June Norton, who lives in the same boardinghouse to write his song, "When You Smile with Your Eyes in Mine." Song publisher Simon Berg signs Tommy and the song becomes an enormous success. Success goes to Tommy’s head, he forgets June, surrounds himself with Broadway lowlife, spends extravagantly, and becomes infatuated with Mona Merwin, a musical comedy performer. He hits a rough patch, and June asks Berg to help her save Tommy from himself, so he decreases Tommy's royalty checks. Tommy's Broadway friends desert him when the checks stop coming. Now that Tommy has seen the error of his ways Berg sends him to a country cottage he purchased in Flatbush, where Tommy finds June waiting to marry him.