Acting
The Drews are considering new scripts when they decide to produce Pay-Day, the melodramatic story of the wealthy and sinister Kirke Brentwood and his lower-class wife, Doris Fenton.
After complaining about her dull life, shop girl Sally Manvers falls asleep on the roof of her apartment. Drenched from a downpour, Sally awakens and finds the roof entrance locked. She enters the apartment of society woman Mrs. Standish and encounters Mrs. Standish's brother, Walter Arden Savage, opening the safe. Sally protects Savage from a burglar, and after learning that he and his sister plan to steal their jewels to collect insurance money, she agrees to keep quiet if they take her with them to Newport.
"Damaged Goods" pictures the terrible consequences of vice and the physical ruin that follows the abuse of moral law. It is a stirring plea for a pure life before marriage, in order to make impossible the transmission of hereditary traits to future generations.
A naĂŻve 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.
A feisty, independent young woman, Damophilia Illington ("Phil" for short, hence the title), the daughter of a progressive university professor, is devastated by the sudden death of her father. The town's banker, an arrogant stuffed shirt, wants to marry Phil and has himself declared her guardian. Not wanting to marry him, she quickly leaves town and lands a job at a nearby university as an assistant to a professor of Greek literature (an area in which her father trained her) who is bitter and resentful after the breakup of his engagement to a woman who, it turned out, had been lying to him. "Phil", however, is determined to win him over.
Silent drama with two different New York stories. One tells of a good man led astray until a dream causes him to change his ways. The other is about a man whose despair over his love marrying another is lifted through increasingly unlikely events.
After a prologue where we are shown the backgrounds of Wilhelm II and Woodrow Wilson, we see the story of Conrad Le Brett from Alsace-Lorraine. Forced to fight for Germany Conrad, sees soldiers taking girls into a church to rape them and kills one who murders a baby. Shot in the encounter he is taken to a Brussels hospital run by nurse Edith Cavell where he falls in love with American nurse, Amy Gordon. After Edith Cavell assassination and the murder of Conrad’s sister Vilma by the evil Lieutenant Ober Conrad honors her dying request that he go to America and defend Alsace-Lorraine's reputation. Once there he convinces President Wilson that Alsatians should be allowed to enlist. Fighting with the "doughboys," Conrad kills Ober, and after the armistice, returns to Amy.
At her mother’s behest Kate Leigh marries wealthy Basil Kildare, owner of a Southern plantation called Storm. When Basil’s servant and mistress Mahaly protests bitterly he takes their shared son away from her. Kate discovers her new husband is a coarse and brutal alcoholic and turns for friendship to Dr. Jacques Benoix and his mother. When Basil becomes aware of their relationship, he finds the doctor and they have a brutal fight. Later Basil is found dead and Jacques is sentenced to life in prison. On her deathbed, Mahaly confesses that she killed Basil, leaving Kate and Jacques to begin a new life together.
The Enchanted Cottage stars Richard Barthelmess as Oliver, a physically and emotionally wounded World War I veteran who comes home to a fiancée who promptly leaves him. Licking his wounds in solitude, he meets a young woman named Laura (May McAvoy). They fall in love and agree to marry, but unexpected and magical events occur inside The Enchanted Cottage where they have agreed to spend their wedding night.
The Women's Political League decides to find a female candidate for mayor and their choice is Kay Gerson who, they figure, will win votes from the men because of her looks. But the town's political boss, Jim Bradley, counters with his own good-looking candidate, Freddy Bleeker, who he thinks will get the women's vote.
A prospector named Rodin is blackmailed for years by Estrella, who tricks him into believing he murdered her missing husband. After meeting Alice, Rodin traps Estrella in a secret room and disposes of her trunk, leading to charges of her murder. He's acquitted on a technicality when her body isn't found. Alice admits she believes he's guilty, and Rodin, releasing her, commits suicide in his library.
George Woods is leading a happy and contented life with his wife and little daughter in the small town of Milford when millionaire Cyrus Morton from New York offers to make him his chauffeur. George accepts and goes to the city where he finds everyone preoccupied with the pursuit of wealth. The fever enters his blood, and upon finding Morton's lost wallet, George takes the money and plunges into the stock market. His investment is successful, and from then on he becomes obsessed with money, forgetting his wife and child in his vain pursuit. But even with the vast wealth he accumulates, George finds that he is unhappy. Through his wife Mary's efforts, he finally realizes that true happiness cannot be found in the accumulation of riches, but lies in simpler pleasures.
A religious zealot and his nephew are thrown together on a South Seas Island with an alcoholic beachcomber and a native dancer. A battle to see who will 'civilize' whom ensues.
A man murders his wife's lover and escapes with his daughter to the South Pacific. A detective is in pursuit, joined by a young man who eventually falls in love with the daughter.
A criminologist and a government agent team up to expose a ring of German spies.
John Weston leaves his wife and kids to marry adventuress Doris Clark and loses his mind when he realizes his mistake. A lost film.
The story of a girl who rebelled against the "double standard" of morals, and demanded that women should have as much right to expect virtue in the man they are going to marry as a man expects of a woman.
Ragna "Rags" Jansen has found local success and acclaim in her small town as an actress, but dreams of stardom on Broadway.
Carr plays Anna Webb, whose husband John (Lynn Hammond) invents a new kind of sewing machine. The patent makes the family wealthy, and after Webb dies, Anna takes over the business. She puts her sons John (Percy Helton) and Harry Joseph Striker) in charge of the factory, while daughter Ruth (Jane Thomas) elopes. When Harry steals some money, the blame falls on John, who leaves town.
When bank president Leslie Morrison dips into the till, he seeks to place the blame on bank clerk David Moulton by altering the figures in Moulton's books. He lays his plan carefully, but upon leaving the building late one night, Morrison falls into an elevator shaft and is killed. Moulton, the one man known to have been there, is charged with murder and tried by district attorney Robert Murdock. Unable to afford a competent defense, Moulton is convicted and sentenced to die in an electric chair. However, Mary Reed, a stenographer who loves Moulton, appeals as a last resort to the newly elected public defender, Arthur Nelson. Nelson investigates the case and discovers evidence on the very eve of the execution, evidence that will warrant a stay. Rescued from death in the nick of time, Moulton is granted a new trial under the supervision of the public defender and is found innocent.
