Acting
Michael Cardigan is an American patriot in the months before the American Revolution. He fights to broker a peace deal between settlers and the Cayuga tribe and almost loses his life in the process. Despite the fact that he loves Silver Heels, the ward of the British governor, Michael joins with the famed Minute Men to plot revolution and, he hopes, a free American nation.
Eve Mason, a white-passing black woman, moves to a remote cottage she inherited from her late father. She makes the acquaintance of her neighbor, a dashing black settler named Hugh Van Allen, and quickly falls for him. Trouble brews as the local cadre of racist hucksters want the valuable land Van Allen lives on, and will do anything to take it from him.
Desperate for a job, New York showgirl Eva Lee accepts an offer from Cameron Camden and Eban Burnham to go to South America to dance exotic.
After her father and two brothers are killed, Cynthia and her mother go to New York, where Cynthia gets a job in his office working for a wealthy stockbroker who's attracted to her.
Eugene Solari is fanatically jealous of his beautiful wife Enid. While on a mission for her father, she visits Major Trevor. Her husband finds out and, enraged, rushes to Trevor's house. Enid tries to beat him there to warn Trevor, but is too late--when she gets there Eugene shoots her and then kills himself, but not before he names Trevor as his killer. Trevor is arrested for his murder.
This film is a very loose film adaptation of the 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo and presumed lost: The wealthy girl Esmeralda is kidnapped by gypsies at birth and becomes, as one might assume, the darling of Paris. She is loved by the bell ringer and former hunchback Quasimodo, Frollo, the wicked surgeon who cares him, and an equally wicked Captain Phoebus.
This epic traces, from the Beginning, the lineage of the race of peace-loving people. Mankind at its best is highlighted as greatness of character across the centuries is displayed: Noah heeding God's command, Moses leading the Israelities, Jesus Christ dying to save humanity and promote His message of peace. Moving into our modern epoch: Columbus's discovery of America, the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation; A race of free humans committed to the proliferation of peace and freedom. What becomes of this race when autocratic powers threaten democracy in the time of the first World War?
Annette Kellerman, the Australian swimming star of the early 1900s, made a number of films, most of them in the 1910s, which displayed her athletic skills. Most of these films were underwater fantasies, and this one was no exception. Here, Kellerman is Merilla, a mermaid who is the "Queen of the Sea." Not satisfied with being a mermaid, she wants a mortal human body with an immortal soul. She discovers she can achieve this if she saves four human lives.
Helene Palmer and her husband Orrin have grown apart, and she becomes infatuated with bachelor Edward Wadsworth. With the outbreak of World War I, Orrin and Edward enlist, while Helene works as a Red Cross nurse in a small French town. Edward is wounded on a dangerous scouting mission near the town and Orrin carries him to safety. The enemy invades during the night, and Orrin rescues Helene as she is about to be overpowered by a German officer. The dying Edward, morally strengthened by his experience as a soldier, encourages the couple to reunite. Soon after, peace is declared.
A disabled man plots revenge on a woman who married someone else.
The experiences of the American ambassador to Germany, James Gerard, are recounted in this semi-documentary.
During World War I, an illegitimate son of the German Kaiser, who had been raised in the US--and is a double for the Kaiser's son, the Crown Prince--is sent to Germany as a spy in order to kill both the Kaiser and his son.
Theda Bara's vamping is at its most evil here. She plays the Russian Princess Petrovitch, who loves only her pearls. Her husband, the Prince (E.F. Roseman), sells state secrets to a spy to pay her exorbitant bills, and her response is to report him to the secret police. Then she runs off to Monte Carlo with her lover, Count Zerstoff (Emil deVarney), but she poisons him after he racks up a load of gambling losses.
