Easy-Money Charley, the best fake crippled beggar in New York, loses his beloved dog and adopts a dying prostitute's daughter to fill the empty place in his heart. But his fellow crooks and dissemblers mock him for sentimentality, and he disowns the child in order to bring her up secretly in the safety of a distant suburb. He brings her up as a young lady in ignorance of her true history or of his; but when he discovers that her affections have taken an unexpected slant, it brings about an end to their tranquil life, a crisis of conscience, and an opportunity for the sinister 'White-Eye' to take a hand...
John Stonehouse (William Russell) checks into a hotel, intending to commit suicide. But instead he winds up helping a girl, Gilberte Bonheur (Fritzi Brunette), out of a jam. He finds her bending over a man who she has apparently killed, and since he's about to kill himself anyway, he offers to assume the blame. Throw a valuable emerald into the works, and the fact that the dead man suddenly comes back to life, and Stonehouse -- not to mention the audience -- becomes thoroughly befuddled by it all. Everything clears up, however, when Gilberte gives him a theater ticket -- it turns out that everything he went through was the plot to a stage play, enacted in real life by the actors. The critics roasted the play, saying it wasn't true to life, and this was their proof that the situations really could happen. Gilberte retires from acting when Stonehouse proposes.
A rough criminal gets a second chance at life thanks to a kindly (and wealthy) lady saloon patron. But he hasn't gone straight yet, as he and a partner attempt to rob the home of a rich homeowner-- whose wife is asleep in the next room.
This short was made as a wedding present for Lord and Lady Mountbatten. In it, Lady Mountbatten has a valuable pearl necklace, which a very large number of crooks wants to steal.
A Japanese merchant attempts to drive one of his rivals mad by impersonating a man he had once murdered.
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.
A young Chinese woman, working in the kitchen at a London dance club, is given the chance to become the club's main act.
A young woman consents to a bad marriage to an unscrupulous man in order to save her father from ruin. When her marriage is disrupted by a murder, three different people confess to it.
Sherlock Holmes is a master at solving the most impenetrable mysteries, but he has his work cut out for him on his latest case. As the famed detective investigates an alleged theft, he’s brought face to face with his most devious adversary yet — Professor Moriarty.
When an unscrupulous banker ruins his family, a young man swears to bring him to justice, so he adopts a new identity, the mysterious Judex, and ominously disguised and sunk into the muddy path of vengeance, punishes the crooks and protects the innocents. (Originally a twelve-part epic serial.)
Coke Ennyday, the scientific detective, divides his time into periods of "Sleep", "Eat", "Dope" and "Drinks". In fact, he overcomes every situation with drugs: consuming cocaine to increase his energy or injecting it in his opponents to incapacitate them. To help the police, he tracks down a contraband of opium (which he eagerly tastes) transported within "leaping fishes", saving a "fish-blower" girl from blackmail along the way.
Roscoe is a doctor who falls in love with a pretty woman whose boyfriend, in turn, falls in love with Roscoe's wife's jewelry.
As a penniless man worries about how he will manage to eat, he is joined by a young waif and her dog, who are in the same predicament. Meanwhile, across town a dishonest lawyer is working with a gang of criminals, trying to swindle an innocent young heiress out of her inheritance. As the heiress is on her way home from the lawyer's office, she notices the young man and the waif in the midst of their latest problem with the authorities, and she rescues them. Later on, the young man will have an unexpected opportunity to repay her for her kindness.
A man recognizes the thief who had previously robbed him as one of the men involved in an unrelated mob shootout.
Boisterous gangster kingpin Bull Weed rehabilitates his former lawyer from his alcoholic haze, but complications arise when he falls for Weed's girlfriend.
A man stays with a fisherman and his adult daughter in coastal Finland, develops feelings for the daughter and begins to uncover a terrible secret haunting the family.
A troubled detective tries to solve the case of a murdered woman in broad daylight before his demons get the best of him.
Buster is thrown off a train near an amusement park. There he gets a job in a shooting gallery run by the Blinking Buzzards mob. Ordered to kill a businessman, he winds up protecting the man and his daughter by outfitting their home with trick devices.
Rich old Cyrus West's relatives are waiting for him to die so they can inherit. But he stipulates that his will be read 20 years after his death. On the appointed day his expectant heirs arrive at his brooding mansion. The will is read and it turns out that Annabelle West, the only heir with his name left, inherits, if she is deemed sane. If she isn't, the money and some diamonds go to someone else, whose name is in a sealed envelope. Before he can reveal the identity of her successor to Annabelle, Mr. Crosby, the lawyer, disappears. The first in a series of mysterious events, some of which point to Annabelle in fact being unstable.
The murderer “Boss” Huller – after having spent ten years in prison – breaks his silence to tell the warden his story.