Acting
The story of a poor young woman, separated by prejudice from her husband and baby, is interwoven with tales of intolerance from throughout history.
Two young girls are sent away to live with their uncle, which sets off a chain of events resulting in an Indian attack on the town.
During the American Revolution, a young soldier carrying a crucial message to General Washington is spotted and pursued by a group of enemy soldiers. He takes refuge with a civilian family, but is soon detected. The family and their neighbors must then make plans to see that the important message gets through after all.
Club pianist Ted Mason writes a love song for Beth Barton. A rival named Goldie steals the song for her husband, Steve, to publish. Beth faces unfair blame from her friends and teacher because of the popular song. Ted proves he wrote it by creating an even better song, exposing the theft, and winning Beth back.
Bessie, the new school teacher, arrives at the little western village, and on her way to the school she meets a gang of cowboys who bestow boxes of candy and other little offerings. Not long after the girl is seized with a jumping toothache. Each boy suggests a cure, but without success. Tom, however, now appears and offers a cure. He leaves her a note stating if she will submit to his treatment he will guarantee to cure her toothache. She is in such agony that she is inclined to submit to anything, and so, though not knowing what the cure may be, consents. After great preliminaries Tom administers a resounding kiss upon her cheek..
The Parson and his friend Pete, a worthless inebriate of the village, in a drunken sleep by the roadside. His cure has been tried often, but in vain. The Parson's friend suggests a novel scheme, that of taking him to his home, waking him there and make him believe he is in paradise; then feeding him wine until he is asleep again, placing him back in the same place in the road. The scheme worked to perfection and it looks as if the village saloon will get no more of Pete's money for drink.
The young lover leaving home at the opening of the war to join the Confederate Army, tells his brother to take care of his fatherless sweetheart during the perilous times which are to follow. But the brother weakens and fails to be true to his trust. He permits her to believe that her lover is dead. Caught in the neighborhood, however, between the lines of the enemy, the brother appears before them at the crucial moment. In retaliation the false brother turns informer. Both forces are aroused to arms and during the attack upon the girl defending her wounded lover and family alone in the negro's cabin retribution comes in the form of a stray bullet.
Roy Norris, a young author, proposes to pretty Mary Ford and is accepted. The first year or more of their married life is one of bliss, made all the sweeter by the arrival of their first-born. The little trio, father, mother, baby, are bound together by love, until unreasonable jealousy possesses the young couple. While at work in his studio, the young author is visited by his wife just as he is complimenting his stenographer on her valuable aid, and from this the wife sees grounds tor suspicion. On the other hand, the young husband, seeing his wife talking to a stranger, becomes suspicious.
John Logan leaves bucolic Happy Valley to make his fortune in the city. His parents and his sweetheart become miserable and beleaguered in his absence, but after several years he returns wealthy. However, his embittered father, not recognizing him for who he is, plans to murder the newly-arrived 'stranger' for his money.
A naïve country girl is tricked into a sham marriage by a wealthy womanizer, then must rebuild her life despite the taint of having borne a child out of wedlock.
Agnes, a singer in a country church, is practicing one day when a vaudeville manager hears her and offers her a job. Over the objections of the curate who loves her, she accepts the offer and goes to the city. Later the curate goes to hear Agnes perform and, fearing that her soul is being corrupted by show business, he asks her to return to the small town with him. When she refuses, he is prepared to kill her in order to protect the purity of her soul. This brings about her change of heart, and together they return to the little church.
France, on the eve of the French Revolution. Henriette and Louise have been raised together as sisters. When the plague that takes their parents' lives causes Louise's blindness, they decide to travel to Paris in search of a cure, but they separate when a lustful aristocrat crosses their path.
Susan, a pretty society girl, bored with her lot in life, reads and decides to use her time and money to help the poor. She founds the Joan of Arc Mission and quickly becomes an easy mark for con men.
D.W. Griffith short intercuts two different stories before mixing them together at the end. The film focuses on a telephone girl who leaves work for her lunch break at the same time as "The Lady" goes to a jewelry store to pick up some priceless jewels. When the telephone girl returns to work she gets a phone call from the house of "The Lady" as a robber has broken in and is trying to steal the jewels.
Poor Hiram didn't anticipate the trouble laid out for him when he and his wife went for a stroll in the park.
A nostalgic look at film clips from the Silent era.
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.
A disfigured young woman with two beautiful sisters is courted by a blind man. Will he still love her when his sight is restored?
A poor girl is secretly in love with a wealthy young planter.
In the 7th-century B.C., the Assyrians storm the walls of the Jewish city of Bethulia, leaving its people frightened and ready to hand their homes over to the invaders. As the Assyrians close in, the citizens are cut off from the outside world, and they began to starve. Seeing her people's desperation, Jewish widow Judith poses as a harem worker, winning her entry into the Assyrian camp, where she plans to kill their general, Holofernes.
