Acting
Two families, abolitionist Northerners the Stonemans and Southern landowners the Camerons, intertwine. When Confederate colonel Ben Cameron is captured in battle, nurse Elsie Stoneman petitions for his pardon. In Reconstruction-era South Carolina, Cameron founds the Ku Klux Klan, battling Elsie's congressman father and his African-American protégé, Silas Lynch.
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.
A Scots-Irish lad comes to America hoping to find his fortune. On the sea voyage he meets and falls for a lovely young girl, but they are parted on arrival. Years later, in the Kentucky town where he has settled and prospered, he meets the girl again, and both sparks and complications arise.
Terry Dunniva, a retired sea-captain living in Marblehead, Massachusetts, adopts two children, Chrystal and Ned. As the girl grows to womanhood, Terry realizes his fatherly-love had grown to something stronger. He asks her to become his wife. Chrystal, who is in love with her foster-brother, consents rather than destroy Terry's happiness. On the day of their marriage, Ned returns from a long voyage with the intent of making Chrysal his wife. And, he, too, rather than destroy the happiness of his adopted-father, leaves to embark on an Artic voyage that might mean his death. When Terry learns of the sacrifice both Chrystal and Ned are making on behalf of his happiness, he takes Ned's place on the voyage and gets both to pledge that if he does not return, they will marry each other.
When Dorothy's Southern, aristocratic father Colonel Raleigh refuses to let her marry Forbes Stewart, a Northern gambler, the couple elopes. When Dorothy soon thereafter becomes pregnant, Forbes vows to reform, but authorities arrest him on a gambling charge, and he serves a year in prison. During that time, and just before the birth of the baby, a woman comes to Dorothy and claims to be Forbes' wife. Stunned, Dorothy returns to her father, but the colonel throws her out, and so, on her own, she has her baby, whom the community believes to be illegitimate. Convinced that she has sinned, Dorothy is about to kill herself when Forbes, just out of jail, finds her and explains that the other woman simply had been an ex-sweetheart trying to win him back.
Lupino Delchini, a waiter in a little restaurant, is discharged for giving food to a penniless beggar, and Detective Hartley rewards the Italian by getting him an appointment as pound master. Flora is attracted to Lupino by his kindness, but when he adopts a small Belgian boy, he falls in love with Madame Maureveau, whom he believes to be the boy's mother.
Two sisters are separated when their parents divorce.
Buck, who is preparing to enter a theological seminary, aids his brother and some friends who are fleeing from justice, and thus implicated he is sent to prison for 2 years. There he meets again Hope Standish, a Salvation Army girl who had interested him. Returning home, he meets the old district circuit rider and promises to continue the circuit rider's work when he dies. The brother escapes from prison and is converted by Buck, who falls in love with Hope.
On a steamboat heading North, where his brother has struck gold, Mike Dane falls in love with Estelle MacDonald. When he arrives at the Canadian trading post, Dane learns that his brother has been murdered and his partner sentenced to death as the killer.
Lillian Vale is the naïve and unworldly daughter of minister Josiah Vale. Swept off her feet by handsome Robert Powers, Lillian marries him, unaware that he is constitutionally incapable of fidelity. Led astray by vampish Hattie Lee, Powers follows his new paramour to the Big City -- the first of several bad decisions which culminate in disaster for the errant hero.
Harry's bride is murdered at their wedding along with Harry's mother and father, and the good-hearted outlaw turns grimly malevolent.
Newspaper publisher Temple Trask, who answers the "Letters to the Lovelorn" column under the nom-de-plume "Mrs. Carfax," becomes the hit of his college reunion when he revives his female impersonation act. Returning home, Temple meets Billy Wise, another college friend, who wagers one hundred dollars that Temple will not go into a restaurant dressed as a woman. He takes the dare, then sees Helen Scott in the restaurant and, although he is a cynic who does not like women because he knows too much about them, he falls in love. When he notices that Adrian Graw, a crook whom Temple knew when he was a cub reporter, is after Helen's fortune, Temple, impersonating Mrs. Carfax, accompanies Helen and her grandmother, Mrs. Keyes, aboard a steamer to protect them. A lost film.
The young authoress had come to the edge of the desert for her mother's sake. There she met the two young prospectors and a romance began. But the men were about to go across the desert, where they had heard rumors of gold. They decided to play square and before going determined to let the coin decide who should ask the young authoress the all-important question. The flip of the coin decided the older should try his luck first. He learned the girl did not love him. But the other she promised to marry when he should return from the gold lands, and the care of her sick mother, who would then be restored to health, should no longer interfere with her happiness. The young partners soon reached the other side of the desert, where success came to them far beyond their expectations.
Reporter Muriel Manning succeeds in rounding up Mrs. Madison who murdered gambler Howard Trimble. But after listening to her story of Trimble’s degradation and threatened blackmail of her which drove her to an attempt at suicide during which she shoots him in error Muriel decides never to reveal her identity in print.
A young couple struggle to get ahead, the wife always assuaging the troubles of her melancholy husband. As he climbs the ladder of success, he abandons the homely values and begins an affair with a beautiful woman. His wife leaves him, returning to her mother's home where she bears a child. When the husband is abandoned by his lady friend, remorse drives him to find his wife.
Molly Kite, the neglected child of a drunken father, rouses the sympathy of the minister, Mr. Shipton, who also teaches the school at Dead Tree. The minister-school-master persuades some of his parishioners to give the girl decent clothes, and he coaxes her into attending school. At first unruly and sullen, she gradually comes to feel that the minister is her best friend. One day she happens to see him meet a strange girl on the street. Apparently overjoyed, he kisses the stranger. Molly rushes into the house, tears off her new clothes, and vows she will never go to school again.
Universal star Laura LaPlante stars in this lighthearted comedy based on Sophie Kerr's magazine story, Relative Values. Octavia Lowden (LaPlante) has virtually become a drudge in order to support her sponging relatives -- flapper sister Eloise (Lucille Ricksen), hypochondriac Aunt Minnie (Lydia Yeamans Titus), and storytelling Uncle Eph (James O. Barrows). Only Octavia's frail grandmother (Jennie Lee) really needs help. When Octavia's sweetheart, photographer Pritchett Spence (T. Roy Barnes), discovers the toll these bloodsuckers are exacting, he plots with the family doctor to rescue her.
A 1917 film directed by Elmer Clifton, Joseph Henabery, and Dorothy Gish.
Jan Saxe and Peter Harlingen, two young men from Holland, arrive in America with little orphan Bertha Kruger whom they have befriended during the trip and whom they both love. Bertha has come to live with her blind Aunt Sophie, and when Jan secretly raises $500 for an operation to restore her aunt's sight, Bertha marries Peter, believing that he was the donor of the "secret gift."
