Acting
Young gypsy girl Mary, is seduced by the immoral Robert Crane and abandoned. She is exiled from the gypsies and, along with her mother Zenda, known as "The Woman in Black," she vows revenge. Meanwhile, Crane blackmails Stella Everett's father into forcing her to marry him, even though she loves Frank Mansfield, Crane's rival for a congressional seat. Frank wins, but Stella still faces the prospect of marriage to Crane until Zenda comes to her with a plan. On their wedding day, after the vows are recited, when Crane lifts the veil from his wife's face, he is shocked to discover, that his new bride is Mary. Now Stella and Frank are free to marry, and Zenda has gained her revenge.
A young clubman, who prided himself upon his popularity, made a wager with a friend that he would marry a certain society girl. His wooing met with great success as far as the girl was concerned, but her father, a judge, did not look with favor upon the young man, so the latter induced the girl to elope. She wrote her husband-to-be, telling him to have a closed carriage at a certain corner near her home and she would fly with him.
This elaborate and well-staged silent version of Hertz' play is exceedingly well produced for 1913: it starts off by introducing the actors by name and role, then showing them in double exposure in street clothes and in costumes. The production values are also elaborate and the look of the set designs reminds one of the elaborate backdrops that Melies used in his shots.
The course of true love was running very smoothly until the girl became interested in the cause of votes for women. Her fiancé did not approve of it. There was a quarrel, and the engagement ring was haughtily returned. The young woman not only stubbornly refused to make up, but decided to become a really truly militant suffragette.
An innocent man, serving a sentence of five years in prison through the perjured testimony of the real criminal, Steve Carson, foreman of a shipyard, strikes up a warm friendship with his cellmate, Harold Norwood, a defaulting paying teller. No less strange than their friendship is the befriending of Steve's wife, Annie, by Julia Seymour, prima donna, who is Norwood's wife. As a reward of good behavior, the men are released on Christmas morning. Annie is bewildered by the receipt of a bank book which shows that large deposits of gold have been made in her name and that of her sister, Mary, by their uncle, George Hosford, who, dying in Alaska, has entrusted the book to Joe Hawes, a fellow prospector.
