Acting
Hiram Ward, a cynical businessman, is having trouble with his employees when Caroline Weatherbee arrives and claims to be a distant relative. Her natural charm brings about a peaceful settlement of a strike, but she returns to her southern home for fear of bringing scandal to Hiram.
Society matron Mrs. Fanshaw Renwick entertains lavishly at her posh home. Living with her are her two daughters, Phillipa, a madcap eighteen-year-old, and her married sister Errica who is having an affair with Ralli, a designing South American. When Captain Chantry arrives with an impressive letter of introduction, Mrs. Renwick welcomes him while Phillipa falls in love with him. On the night of the masquerade party, Phillipa induces Chantry to take her to the party in disguise, because her mother will not permit her to attend. The captain, in reality a jewel thief, readily complies, believing it will provide him with the perfect opportunity to steal Mrs. Renwick's famous pearls.
Will the orphan girl win her hero in spite of scheming relatives who seek to keep her in the background?
Marcel Murphy, a telephone operator with society aspirations, overhears Mrs. Benson's conversation describing a party she is planning for her son, Ralph, and wangles an invitation by imitating Mrs. Benson's voice. At the party a maid accuses Marcel of the theft of another guest's jewelry, but she appeals to Mr. Benson, who covers up for her by describing Marcel as the daughter of an old friend and by secretly installing her in a hotel suite.
Mazie, a shop-girl of New York City's Little Ireland, goes to the aid of a young man in formal attire involved in a street fight. Though badly beaten, he bears a strong resemblance to Lord Lytton, the hero of a magazine story Mazie is reading in installments. Although he is, in reality, a soda clerk, Mazie permits his attentions, and together they read the "Sloppy Stories" yarn about English nobility.
Nita Moore, a circus performer, is mistreated by the ringmaster and runs away to join an old couple who are persuaded that Nita is their longlost daughter. Phillip Lessoway, the couple's lawyer, falls in love with Nita, but after a quarrel he discovers and reveals to the adoptive parents that Nita is an imposter.
The Most Shocking Film of 1923! Directed by Herbert Blache, The Untameable dramatizes the then-sensational subject of dual personality, with Gladys Walton in the dual role of Joy and her whip-toting, brutal, sadistic alter-ego Edna, and Etta Lee as her faithful Asian lesbian maid.
A supposedly tame ape suddenly goes on a rampage in a small town. Based on a true story.
Leslie Adams, secretary to the city editor of a newspaper, persuades him to let her write up a society affair. Her efforts result in a libel suit against the paper, and Leslie is told to prove her story or join the ranks of the unemployed.
The adopted Irish daughter of the Rosensteins, Second Avenue pawnshop owners, Rose is much sought after by Tim McCarthy, a wealthy Irish contractor many years her senior. Meanwhile, Nat, her adopted brother, is accused of stealing from his firm and is arrested and put in jail; Rosenstein, heartbroken, becomes seriously ill.
Young shop-girl Mamie Conroy and wealthy Jeanette Gregory become close friends. When Mamie foils an attempted abduction of Jeanette, the latter's grandfather, Simon Gregory, brings Mamie into his home and treats her like a member of the family. But she is again involved in a kidnapping attempt and is herself accused of robbery.
Rosie Cooper is a cashier in a cheap restaurant and among those she favors is ... Smith, the bakery boy. Rose is a 'wise kid' all right, but it takes her some time to see through a shiny young thin model gent... The girl entertains his advances because he means romance to her. But he proves his shallow character and Rosie is glad to turn to Jimmy, the bakery youth.
The department store clerk Mary prevents a robbery at the store where she works, involving a necklace belonging to a rich unmarried woman named Eva Bandy. Later, she manages via a misunderstanding to prevent a million-dollar robbery of the same woman. With the man of her dreams, who helped her foil the robberies, she is "adopted" by Eva.
Natalie, whose mother is engaged to Wallace Brewster, the reform candidate for mayor, is seventeen years old and resents being treated as a little girl, particularly by her mother's fiancé. When she meets the opposition candidate's son, Lance Christie, he persuades her to secure some papers incriminating Brewster.
Basil Van Bibber, son of a prominent family, and Nora Schultz, daughter of a butcher who invented a sausage machine that made the Van Bibbers rich, pretend to be in love to please their parents; but when Nora tries to protect the young Van Bibber from a charge of reckless driving, they find they really are in love.
M'liss, raised in the mountains as an unruly tomboy, is orphaned and is offered "protection" by Calaveras John and Johnny Cake, friends of her father's murderer. She shows no interest in anything until the new schoolmaster persuades her to tidy herself and get some education. Believing the schoolmaster to be in love with some other girl, M'liss decides to run off with another man.
Jan Saxe and Peter Harlingen, two young men from Holland, arrive in America with little orphan Bertha Kruger whom they have befriended during the trip and whom they both love. Bertha has come to live with her blind Aunt Sophie, and when Jan secretly raises $500 for an operation to restore her aunt's sight, Bertha marries Peter, believing that he was the donor of the "secret gift."
When a circus troupe comes to a small, extremely conservative New England town, the residents go to their minister to have him protest the scandalous fact that the female tightrope walker wears a pair of pink tights. When she has an accident and is forced to recuperate at the minister's house, he has to hide her in order to avoid even more of a scandal. Mazie Darton, a high-wire performer with a traveling circus, longs for a peaceful country life. Forced to stay in a small town while laid up with an injury, Darton is spurned by the conservative townspeople. Rev. Jonathon Meek, the local parson, befriends the circus troupe, especially Darton. But he, too, opens himself to criticism from his flock, who protest his closeness with the show people. Eventually, Darton's boyfriend arrives and the pair become closer. The parson fades from the scene as a possible mate for Darton, who ends up winning the hearts of the townspeople.
Enid Gregory, a pianist at the Melody Shop, a music store on Broadway, is content with her snappy, routine existence until Janet Fenwick, a society girl whose father committed suicide under a cloud of financial disgrace, comes to Enid's boardinghouse.
Broadway chorus girl Jean Crosby visits her sister in Murphysburg and finds that not only has her brother-in-law, Lysander Sprowl, squandered all the money she has sent, but the leading male citizens--all members of the Purity League--who were so friendly to her in New York will not now give her a second glance. With the help of newspaperman Toby Caswell, however, she anonymously publishes her life story in the town newspaper, thus frightening the men into offering Jean "hush money."
