Acting
Sheldon Polk's father, a wealthy banker, agrees to make a loan to Frank Farnsworth. Sheldon is robbed while delivering the money and is arrested for theft on circumstantial evidence.
In a prologue, as a woman pages through a book, male figures, including a musketeer, a cowboy, a swordsman and a military officer, appear and bow. In the main story, the visit of Prince Ferdinandi sends New York society ladies scurrying to purchase gowns for the upcoming ball. The woman seen earlier looking longingly at the book, model Marjorie Bowen, fights off the advances of Cadwallader Smith, who accompanies a patron. When handsome Sir Derwain Leeds, the prince's aide-de-camp, arrives to see his fiancée Yvette Fernau outfitted, Marjorie exchanges a shy smile with him.
Happy O'Brien, called "The Microbe," or "Mike" for short, a female street urchin who sells newspapers dressed as a boy to avoid harassment, is saved from arrest for fighting other newsboys in Chinatown by wealthy author DeWitt Spense. DeWitt, there to purchase drugs, is so moved by Mike's pugnacity, that he takes her to his mansion for literary inspiration. When DeWitt learns that Mike is a girl, he resolves to educate her. As Mike blossoms, DeWitt's attentions turn to love, to the dismay of Judith Winthrope, who wants to marry him, and his friend Robert Breton, who, with Judith, convinces Mike that DeWitt's writing is suffering because of her.
Happy-go-lucky cowboy Bob Fleming exhibits such prowess with his pistol, that he wins the three gold coins offered by millionaire Luther Reed to test his marksmanship. Bob also makes an impression on Reed's pretty daughter Betty. The cowboy is so admired by the local citizenry that when crooks J. M. Ballinger and Rufus Berry arrive in town, they decide to make Bob their patsy. After planting oil on Bob's land, they sell stock to the townfolk and the cowboy, who has been innocently drawn into the scheme, turns it over to the crooks for safekeeping. For his efforts, Bob is arrested and found guilty of defrauding the stock holders, and also charged with being notorious outlaw Pat Duncan. After several adventures, Bob succeeds in capturing the real Duncan, vindicates himself of the charges and wins Betty for his bride.
Princess Triloff, an emigrée from Czarist Russia, escapes to America where she becomes a patron of the arts. She falls in love with the verses of impoverished poet Owen Carey and becomes his anonymous benefactor. When Owen inherits a fortune from his rich Uncle Krakerfeller, he assumes his uncle's identity and confers his own upon an impoverished friend, Frank Manners. At a resort, Owen meets the princess and falls in love with her, but is chagrined to discover that she is enamored with Manners. The princess finally discovers Owen's real identity and the two fall in love.
A mix of guns and mistaken identity leads to chaos in this satirical parody of William S. Hart's melodramatic westerns, finding Buster in the frozen north - "the last stop on the subway".
Norma Wood, a fed-up stenographer leaves her miserly fiancé, charges lavish gowns to her lecherous boss, and sets out to experience life. She is subsequently hired by a wealthy widow to seduce the woman's son away from his current girlfriend.
Sylvia Palprini is a waitress at The Black Beetle, the leading bohemian café in New York City’s Greenwich Village. Among the eclectic customers is artist George Duray, whom she admires from a distance. A jealous suitor, Movros Tarkides, attacks Sylvia and she strikes him with a chair. He is later found dead and she is accused of the murder.
Newlyweds Mary Bird and Myron Sharpe share an idyllic life in a small New England town until the birth of their children. Myron becomes discontented as Mary's time becomes more devoted to her children than to making herself attractive for her husband. When Mary's old friend Pauline Dallas comes to visit, Myron finds himself attracted to her chic appearance. The two are on the threshold of a love affair when Mary becomes lost in a storm while boating.
Mira Sacky (Bessie Barriscale) will inherit a fortune if she is able to come up with ten thousand dollars for lawyers' fees. Since she has no money of her own, the only way she can think of raising the funds is to marry someone wealthy. When she gets the attention of Michael Ordsay (Jack Holt), she quickly asks him to marry her. It seems to be a mismatch, so Mira obtains the needed money from his kindly father (Tom Guise), and heads for Rome, where she undergoes voice training and becomes an operatic star.
An unkempt chorus girl is arrested on a minor charge. In court, she is spotted by a novelist who is looking for someone of her type on whom to model a character in a book he is writing. He takes her into his home where she is looked down upon by his snobbish family. But the girl brings something to the family unlike anything they have known before.
A feud in the Adirondack Mountains develops when Randolph Shaw will not give up a shack and its acreage adjoining the estate of Lord Cecil Bazelhurst, whose wife, the former Evelyn Banks of Jersey City, married him for his title and now wants to get rid of Randolph's ugly shack. When Randolph meets Cecil's sister Penelope, a romance begins which is furthered after one of the Bazelhurst servants shoots Randolph in the arm for trespassing and Penelope, who earlier had looked upon the feud as a joke, runs away to Randolph's house and accepts his engagement proposal. Cecil and his men pursue Penelope, but are frightened away by Randolph's men and are forced to spend a miserable stormy night in the woods. The next day everyone becomes reconciled when Lady Evelyn realizes that the desired property will now be in the family, and Randolph offers Cecil and his men dry, if ill-fitting, garments to wear.
Peggy Mason joins her boyfriend Douglas Wyman at a secluded cabin. When he confesses his love and the fact he is still a married man Peggy is distraught and flees the cabin. But meanwhile Douglas' wife is murdered and when the police arrest him he finds he can't provide an alibi without tarnishing Peggy's reputation.
At a party thrown at the Metcalf estate, the Marquise D'Irancy's Sultana diamond disappears when the lights go out during a power failure. Suspected of the crime is William Kirkland, the wastrel son of the wealthy Kirkland family, but William's sister Diana comes to his defense. Aiding her in the investigation is Clamp, a wandering peddler.
