Acting
Rufus T. Firefly is named president/dictator of bankrupt Freedonia and declares war on neighboring Sylvania over the love of wealthy Mrs. Teasdale.
Thief Gaston Monescu and pickpocket Lily are partners in crime and love. Working for perfume company executive Mariette Colet, the two crooks decide to combine their criminal talents to rob their employer. Under the alias of Monsieur Laval, Gaston uses his position as Mariette's personal secretary to become closer to her. However, he takes things too far when he actually falls in love with Mariette, and has to choose between her and Lily.
An elderly business tycoon, believed to be dying, decides to give a million dollars each to eight strangers chosen at random from the phone directory.
Zudora, not knowing she's an heiress to a $20 million fortune, lives with her uncle, a mystic and detective, who covets her inheritance. She wants to marry John Storm but her uncle is against it. However, the uncle makes a bargain; if Zudora can solve the next twenty mysteries brought to him, she can marry as she chooses. Episodes 1,2 and 8, plus another unidentified chapter, survive. The rest is believed to be lost.
Richard Bruce, an American in fog bound London stumbles into the midst of international intrigue, with Rose Thorne, an innocent dupe. Together they try to unravel the mystery, enlisting the aid of a cat burglar named Holmes, who they bump into along the way.
Unable to agree on the man responsible for the plays commonly attributed to William Shakespeare, Miss Gray, who favors Francis Bacon, and Lieutenant Stanton, who accepts Shakespeare as the author, break off their engagement. Stanton then arranges to be transferred to the Mexican border, and while fighting there is badly wounded. When she hears the news about Stanton's condition, Miss Gray faints, and then dreams that she has been transported to Elizabethan times. Then, after Bacon falls in love with her, she discovers his obsessive jealousy of Shakespeare, and learns that he has bribed a courtier to accuse him of stealing Bacon's plays. As a result, when Miss Gray wakes up, she realizes that she has championed the wrong poet, and so she immediately is reconciled with Stanton, who soon recovers from his wound.
A rich and famous singer disguises himself as a waiter in order to be near the woman he loves, a European princess.
As a derelict paints the face of a girl on a barroom floor, the plot is developed in a series of flashbacks: Robert Stevens, an artist engaged to marry Marion, a society girl, becomes charmed with a fisherman's daughter who poses for him. The society girl's brother brings dishonor upon the fisherman's daughter, and when she commits suicide the artist shields the brother. Stevens is blamed by his fiancée, who terminates their engagement. The artist becomes a derelict and is wrongfully imprisoned. Eventually Stevens is exonerated and reunited with Marion.
A playwright descended from the Borgia family becomes a murder suspect.
Self-made man Emerson Boyd of Every-town owns the Boyd Mills, which uses child labor and disregards health regulations, and the Boyd Chemical Company, which manufactures harmful patent medicines. Crooked politician David Duncan, the mills's general manager, misinforms Boyd about factory conditions. After Boyd's beloved daughter postpones accepting the proposal of Matthew Brand, an unambitious rich young man, until he does something for humanity, Matthew reads an exposé of the mills by editor Clifford Cole. He buys Cole's newspaper when Boyd attempts to stifle it and supports the National Tuberculosis Society's proposal to build a sanitarium in Every-town to combat the rise of tuberculosis.
Unscrupulous Chicago janitor Paul Kroll uses deceit to fund a return trip to his homeland of Sweden. There, via ongoing continuing deceit and manipulation, he gradually attains a monopoly on the matchstick market in several countries and becomes an influential international figure. Based on the true story of Ivar Kreuger.
A convent-raised girl falls under her father's executor's dark influence after her uncle dies. As she turns to evil and threatens society with her wealth, a doctor helps restore her true nature.
Neil McRae, an impoverished composer, loves Cynthia Mason, but, fearing poverty, proposes to wealthy Gladys Cady. Can he compose himself and find the courage to seek love over comfort?
A young girl is kept ignorant of her mother by her aunt. After her aunt dies, the girl is used by crooks and arrested. In prison she meets a kindly woman, who is married to a judge. The woman, unbeknownst to the girl, is her mother, and adopts her. The companion of the deceased aunt, in the midst of a ball, denounces the mother and reveals her secret to the judge and guests. The judge will not forgive his wife, so the mother and daughter leave and work among the slums to benefit humanity. Eventually, the judge relents, and seeks his wife for forgiveness, but he is too late.
A European princess arrives in New York City to secure a much-needed loan for her country. She contracts the mumps, and an actress who looks exactly like her is hired to impersonate her.
A couple of down-and-out British aristocrats buy an American roadhouse.
A policeman investigates a woman's link to murders that are preceded by a shrilling horn inside a family mausoleum.
Confirming his principle that no one escapes the news, a tabloid editor prints a scathing story about his wife.
Auctioneer Spot Cash Cutler is planning the scam of a lifetime, but will he get burned?
Broke and stranded in England, American sportsman Larry Brooks and his pal Ambrose take on increasingly odd jobs to remain in proximity to the aristocratic lady that Larry would woo.
