Acting
A story of duplicity, ambition and misunderstandings when four peoples lives become intertwined in a quest for a political appointment.
A family is attacked by Indians, the father killed and son captured. The widow remarries and her stepdaughter, Mabel, encourages her stepbrother to find his lost half-brother. Dick, influenced by a gambler, gambles away his money and tries to exploit Mabel, prompting her to join the search with a gambler she meets, Jack. They discover the brother is now an Indian chief, leading to further complications.
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.
After the Civil War, an ex-soldier and his family settle in the Dakota Territory. The son quarrels with the father and leaves home. Riding in the hills, he spots a band of Indians attacking a neighboring homestead, and he races back to warn his family as the Indians chase him.
As Poe's lover is slowly dying, he struggles to make money to care for her.
A young girl living in Salem attracts the attentions of The Puritan. After he's brushed off by the girl, he becomes furious and desiring revenge, declares to a council of elders that the girl and her mother are witches.
A gang of thieves lure a man out of his home so that they can rob it and threaten his wife and children. The family barricade themselves in an interior room, but the criminals are well-equipped for breaking in. When the father finds out what is happening, he must race against time to get back home.
At the Italian boarding house the male boarders were all smitten with the charms of Minnie, the landlady's pretty daughter, but she was of a poetic turn of mind and her soul soared above plebeianism and her aspirations were romantic. Most persistent among her suitors was Grigo, a coarse Sicilian, whose advances were odiously repulsive. The arrival at the boarding house from the old country of Giuseppe Cassella, the violinist, filled the void in her yearning heart. Romantic, poetic and a talented musician, Giuseppe was indeed a desirable husband for Minnie.
Antonine, a worthless, good-for-nothing scoundrel, demands money of his cousin Galora, an energetic, provident husband and father. His demands are met with a positive rebuff, and when he becomes insistent be is forcibly ejected by Galora. As he leaves the tenement he vows to get even, and lies in wait until Galora has gone out on business. Climbing to the fifth floor, on which the Galoras live, he watches his chance, which comes when Mrs. Galora goes for an instant to visit a neighbor on the same floor. Darting into the apartment and raising the window he perceives the awful result of a drop to the ground, five stories below, and so evolves a plan that is dastardly in the extreme. Taking the infant child from the cradle, and placing it in a basket he lets it out with a short rope, the end of which he secures by letting the sash down on it, so that to raise the window would precipitate the baby to destruction.
A man recognizes the thief who had previously robbed him as one of the men involved in an unrelated mob shootout.
After her mother's death, Ruth struggles to support herself as a seamstress. While Ruth delivers shirts to the factory owner, the owner's son steals some money and Ruth is accused of the crime. She flees the ghetto of New York's Lower East Side and hides in the country where she meets a young farmer.
Miner Kate Nelson strikes gold but is quickly robbed at a frontier hotel by a desperate Mexican woman, who shoots a hotel clerk during her escape. The thief hides with an Indian girl and her half-breed husband. She seduces the husband into helping her torture and hang his Indian wife over a river. After bravely escaping her bonds, the Red Girl guides Kate and a posse in a thrilling canoe chase. Following a dramatic underwater battle, the culprits are captured. The husband tries to reconcile with his wife, but she rejects him, finding solace and friendship in Kate's embrace.
A stage dancer (Sweet) and a serious-type homebody (Walthall) discover, after marriage, that their individual styles don't mesh. The movie includes elaborate dance sequences.
A girl's family suddenly becomes rich and rejects her long-time sweetheart.
Steve Monteith and Ezra Mason, upper class men, and Bill Bronson, a plebe, are chums and roommates at West Point before the Civil War. Steve prepares to leave for his home in Virginia, and Mason and he exchange photographs before parting. General Abner Montieth, Steve's father, and his sister Clairette are overjoyed and surprised when Steve arrives. Aunt Margie and her adopted daughter, Joan Fitzhugh, who is very fond of Steve, join the family and give Steve a warm welcome. One year later the rumble of war is heard. Steve, now a major, and his father, General, leave at the head of separate companies with the Confederate troops.
Two sisters, Nellie and Florence, support themselves and their mother by sewing. A man accompanying a wealthy client tempts first Nellie and then Florence to leave with him. Nellie rejects him, but Florence goes to his decadent apartment and becomes his mistress. Nellie marries a diligent carpenter and raises a growing family. Eventually the Tempter tosses Florence out, and she dies alone and impoverished.
Henry and Marion have a lover's quarrel and part in anger. They do not reconcile, and ten years pass without contact. Marion becomes a society girl and spends her time at parties with her friends. Henry has become very ill and wishes to see Marion one more time. He writes asking her to visit. When she recieves the note, she laughs and tosses it on the floor, but, later, on a whim, decides to take all her drunken friends with her to visit him. When they arrive, Marion finds Henry dead, clutching her portrait in his hand. She sends her friends away and falls to her knees in remorse. Mary Pickford's debut!
A confirmed bachelor learns that he will inherit his late uncle's fortune only if he marries, which he does reluctantly. Shortly afterward he returns to his bachelor lifestyle but realizes he can't get his wife's face out of his thoughts.
In the apartment hotel lived the aspiring maid, whose solicitude maintained order in the bachelor's apartment. He was her ideal, and the all-adoring bell-boy was firmly but gently given to understand that maids who read "Heliotrope Glendening's Advice to Young Ladies" look higher than ice-water toters. A compromising complication, however, with an unexpected visit from a beautiful lady, quite convinces the aspiring one that wealthy young bachelors may be the grandest men ever, but their aspirations, when it comes to the crucial test, are not for chambermaids. Science influences his actions so much that he gets into trouble with the police.
The amateur dramatic society chooses the Joneses' residence as the location of its next meeting, and both Joneses catch 'the acting bug' in this split-reel subject.
