George elopes with Lou Ellen, a judge's daughter, against the wishes of both their families. Simultaneously, George's friend Jim is in love with Jackie, an actress who gets into trouble for punching a bumbling constable at a raided party. George foolishly allows Jackie to hide in his home, leading to a series of comedic complications as he tries to keep her presence a secret from his new wife, her parents (especially her strict judge father), and his Quaker aunt.
After becoming a Supreme Court justice, Peter Graham is visited by Olive Martin, a singer from New Orleans, Louisiana, with whom he had an affair in his youth. Although Peter has been sending money to maintain Olive's silence and to support their son, she now sees an opportunity to join high society, and demands that Peter divorce his wife to marry her. Meanwhile, in Boston, Massachusetts, Olive's son, Harold, becomes engaged to Peter's daughter, Anita, but the young lovers are soon devastated by the news that they were both sired by the same man. Olive's dissolute brother-in-law, Thomas Donald, finds Peter on the brink of suicide and reveals that he is Harold's father. Thomas goes on to explain that Olive adopted the boy as a means to blackmail Peter. Harold and Anita marry, while Peter confesses to his wife and Olive leaves town.
Irving Robertson, a successful playwright, has just received a message from out of town to witness the initial performance of one of his plays. As he is about to leave, Henderson, the manager, calls to pay a sum due him for royalties. At the same time, Frank Wilson, a friend of the family, drops in.
Madame Vavin dies alone in a small French village without knowledge of her second marriage in England known to anyone. Consequentially her first husband James Fullerton and his tyrannical sister Cornelia take custody of her young daughter Dora. The puritanical pair take Dora to America but disapprove of her spirited nature especially when Dora decides upon a theatrical career. On stage, Dora meets and falls in love with playwright Willard Holcomb, but the fears implanted by Fullerton and his sister make Dora incapable of romantic commitment. As she despairs of her fate, Professor Vavin, who has spent years searching for Dora, discovers his daughter and explains there is nothing to fear from love. Her confidence thus restored, Dora can continue with her life.
A meeting of Saxonian secret service heads in the Bergenschloss is called to discuss the fate of one of their agents who failed a mission in a South American republic due to the actions of Yorke Norroy, a clever American diplomatic agent posing as a man of fashion. The Saxonian leaders then plan for Norroy's destruction.
Ruth Carroll, a schoolteacher in New York's Lower East Side, meets Bolshevist Alexis Minski at her grandfather's bookstore. After Ruth complains to her superintendent about undernourished schoolchildren, Minski's ravings cause her suspension, and she joins the Reds. Meanwhile, Captain Nathan Levison, returning from the Argonne, is assigned by the Secret Service to investigate New York's radicals. While visiting the Carrolls to announce the imminent arrival of Ruth's brother Davy, who saved Levison's life but lost his foot, Levison falls in love with Ruth. Chagrined, Minski convinces Ruth that Levison plans to arrest her and her grandfather, whereupon Ruth furiously requests that Levison be killed. After Governor Alfred E. Smith signs a bill making it illegal to display the Red flag, the Bolshevists plot to assassinate him, the Mayor of Seattle, and Attorney General Alexander Palmer, but Davy, with other soldiers, break up the meeting.
Second attempt to create a feature film out of the 200,000-plus feet of film which Soviet film-maker Sergei Eisenstein shot during 1931-32 in Mexico for American socialist author Upton Sinclair, his wife and a small company of investors. The projected film, to be called "Que Viva Mexico", was never completed due to exhaustion of funds and Stalin's demand that Eisenstein return to the USSR (he had been absent since 1929). The first attempt at editing the footage, in the USA, resulted in "Thunder Over Mexico", released in 1934. In 1940, Marie Seton, from the UK, acquired some of the footage from the Sinclairs in an attempt to make a better cutting according to Eisenstein's skeletal outline for the proposed film. This film has apparently been lost.
Indian Prince Rhandah is sent to be educated in England. After an English woman flirts with him to steal his betrothal amulet, he returns home embittered. When she and her fiancé are later captured in India, the prince ultimately relents to a plea for mercy.
Siegerin Weib
In this apparently lost film, a beautiful dancer's sexual allure is used by an evil cripple to entice men to their deaths. Falling in love with one of the potential victims, she is told by the cripple that he will set her free if her lover, actually a murderer himself, survives and escapes a bizarre labyrinthe which runs beneath the cripple's house.
Belle Bennett plays as the widowed mother of seven children living in Sioux City, Iowa. She moves with them to Cambridge, Massachusetts in order to educate her children with culture and give them every advantage. Bennett, who is unversed in financial matters, soon faces poverty for herself and her children. She takes out a loan from an unscrupulous lender (played by Richard Tucker), who is so impressed by the charm and valiant spirit of Bennett than he neglects to ask her for collateral. Bennett, however, is only able to partially pay her creditors. Marion Nixon, Bennett's eldest daughter, is shocked by her mother's actions and attempts to sacrifice herself to Tucker in order to clear her mother's obligations, even though she is engaged to marry a well to do Harvard undergraduate, played by Rex Bell. This film is believed lost.
Nick Carraway, a young Midwesterner now living on Long Island, finds himself fascinated by the mysterious past and lavish lifestyle of his neighbor, the nouveau riche Jay Gatsby. He is drawn into Gatsby's circle, becoming a witness to obsession and tragedy.
Rustler Pete Sontag kidnaps Merlin Warner after he kills her father. Pete, a drug smuggler who uses his saloon as a front, coerces Merlin though beatings to become the dancer Mexicali Mae. She meets and falls in love with morphine addict Joe Blanchard but Pete frames Joe for a murder that he committed, forcing Mae to hide Joe in a homestead in the hills. After many struggles, Joe is cured of his addiction and proposes to Mae. She accepts, but when his mother and fiancée Eleanor arrive, they offer her money to leave, Mae refuses the money but becomes convinced that she is not good enough for Joe and writes to him that she is returning to the saloon. Joe learning of his mother’s plot arrives at the saloon and in the resultant fight Pete is killed. Mae and Joe are reconciled.
The Gray Ghost is a 1917 American crime-drama film serial directed by Stuart Paton. Chapters: 1. The Bank Mystery; 2. The Mysterious Message; 3. The Warning; 4. The Fight; 5. Plunder; 6. The House of Mystery; 7. Caught in the Web; 8. The Double Floor; 9. The Pearl Necklace; 10. Shadows; 11. The Flaming Meteor; 12. The Poisoned Ring; 13. The Tightening Snare; 14. At Bay; 15. The Duel; 16. From Out of the Past.
Rose Jorgenson, a poor tenement dweller who lives with her daughters Rose and Norma in a slum and whose husband is in prison, finds out that he is to be electrocuted. Distraught, she commits suicide. The children are adopted--Rose by the wealthy Judge Keith, who brings her up in the lap of luxury, and Norma by a poor neighbor, who raises her in the squalid tenement she was born in. After they reach adulthood Norma is hired as an assistant to the shady hypnotist Caistro, who also knows Rose and notices the strong resemblance between the two. Complications ensue.
Henry intends to leave his wife for Mrs. Lenning but seeks to retain custody of their son, leading to a situation where they attempt to force Mrs. Jackson to run away, allowing him to secure a divorce.
Priscilla’s husband Lee makes her life unhappy because of his unfounded jealousy. She warns her old college buddy Eddie not to pay any attention to her at the dance which they are to attend. Eddie loves the wealthy Estelle but is always getting mixed up in some scandal. Estelle finally declares that one more escapade on his part will finish everything. When Priscilla and Eddie greet each other at the dance as old friends, the other two become jealous. Estelle and Lee determine to make their partners jealous but make a mess of it until all is straightened out in the end.
When Jack Greylock elopes with Jessica, wife of his lifelong friend David Drene, they are taken with remorse and she commits suicide. Later, Jack falls in love with Cecile, David's model, who loves Drene. A jealous rival, Quair, informs David about the elopement with Jessica, and to satisfy David's vengeance Jack proposes to kill himself. By mental telepathy, David prevents the tragedy and forgives him. —AFI
Yale graduate, Yale Durant, facing financial ruin and contemplating suicide, discovers his fiancée's father is also facing ruin; he tries to save them but ends up in a perilous situation, getting caught up in a family feud and a rival's plot.
William Jones, raised by his uncle Frank in the city, was rounder, while his twin brother, Alberforce, raised in the country by his grandmother and two aunts, was the opposite. The grandmother had chosen Mattie, a neighbor's little daughter, to be Alberforce's wife, so that she could always keep an eye on him.