During the 18th century, German noblewoman Sophia Frederica, who would later become Catherine the Great, travels to Moscow to marry the dimwitted Grand Duke Peter, the heir to the Russian throne. Their arranged marriage proves to be loveless, and Catherine takes many lovers, including the handsome...
Eddie Ellison is an ex-con who spent time in Sing-Sing prison. Kay marries him as soon as he serves his time. Five years later, Eddie and his ex-convict buddy Larry, have both gone straight, and Eddie and Kay have a beautiful little girl named Shirley. However, Welch has kept a close eye on them...
Soapy Gibson (Edward Ellis) and his wife Annie (Marjorie Rambeau) run a lonely hearts club in a small town. Even during the Depression years these were often "clip joints" - places where people with money but no mate got taken by someone offering the promise of companionship. However, Soapy and...
Jack Brookfield, a gambler with clairvoyant and hypnotic powers, is able to win at cards through his unique gift. But when he inadvertently hypnotizes young Clay Thorne, Thorne kills an enemy of Brookfield's while under a trance. No one believes Brookfield's protestations that Thorne is innocent of...
Casino operator Johnny Lamb hires down-on-her-luck socialite Lucille Sutton as his casino hostess, in order to help her and to improve casino income. But Lamb's pals fear he may follow Lucille onto the straight-and-narrow path, which would not be good for business. So they hire Gert Malloy and...
This film, believed lost, was based on William Vaughn Moody's 1906 play The Great Divide. The story was filmed as a silent film by MGM as The Great Divide (1925) and as an early silent/sound hybrid by First National also called The Great Divide (1929). Judith Temple has come West to Arizona for...
Snobbish attorney Charles 'Beauty' Steele loses his wife due to his drinking and his airs at the same time that his brother-in-law absconds with funds belonging to one of Steele's clients. In search of the thief, Steele is attacked and left for dead. He is rescued by a kindly couple, but suffers...
A woman is tried for the murder of her lover. Director Bayard Veiller's 1929 courtroom drama stars Norma Shearer, Lewis Stone, Lilyan Tashman and H. B. Warner.
Olive Muir, a haughty society girl, objects when Alice Prentice, a girl of lower station, comes to visit her family. After Alice's drunken father comes to visit the Muir home, Olive learns to her horror that she is adopted and that Prentice is her real father.
Informed by her doctor that she is going blind, Carol Trent tearfully breaks off her engagement with Don Manning, hoping to spare him the stigma of a sightless bride. When Hughes catches up with her and demands an explanation, Astor pretends to have fallen out of love with him and further...
A schoolteacher in the Yukon promises her hand in marriage to a rich prospector, but instead she marries his no-good brother. After her husband disappears and is reported dead, she marries a rich New York stockbroker, but doesn't tell him about her first marriage. Soon she is contacted by someone...
The National Red Cross Pageant (1917) was an American war pageant that was performed in order to sell war bonds, support the National Red Cross, and promote a positive opinion about American involvement in World War I.
In this romance set in Russia, a fisherman's daughter is jilted by her true love and instead marries a baron. Time passes and the two men meet each other in Siberia where they have both been exiled. When the poorer man has the opportunity to come home, he changes places with the baron so that he...
A detective who has "four hours to kill" before delivering his prisoner, an escaped killer, spends the time in the lobby of a Broadway theater where a musical is playing. The film focuses on the relationship between the two men, and also between various characters in the theater audience, staff and...
The philandering Dr. Silas Brenton is fired from his position at a large hospital and given 24 hours to vacate the state. He sets himself up in Chicago as a "prestigious" plastic surgeon to the stars. However, Brenton's silver tongue can't cover up his dubious methods, and an investigation into his...
