Posing as relatives, Ralph and Helen Gordon visit Col. Moncrief Gordon's Kentucky mansion, hoping to marry Helen to the colonel's son, Donald. The colonel agrees, but Donald balks at the suggestion, then reveals his secret marriage to Alice Brown. The colonel turns them out, and Ralph conspires...
Impoverished Molly Hanlon is befriended by crooked gambler Lee Kirk, she marries him in a phony ceremony. While frequenting Kirk's gambling den, Molly meets Miles Rand, the dissolute son of Judge Rand, whose obvious attraction for her encourages Kirk to swindle him out of his money. Penniless,...
The true story of Lord Francis Hope who inherits the Hope Diamond and marries showgirl May Yohe. Lord Francis Hope gambles away the family fortune and May Yohe leaves him. Another suspected curse of owning the Hope Diamond.
Unable to pay for the operation that cured his daughter, a man promises to surrender her to the doctor on her eighteenth birthday. Knowing that the physician wishes to make her the subject of his experiments with hypnotism, the distressed father ultimately reneges on his promise, whereupon the...
Brewster, the bean king, has an option of renewal on a certain bean canning plant owned by Ellis. Ellis does not want to renew so hires shyster lawyer Wingate to help him. Brewster sends Betty to renew the contract but Ellis declines. Later Brewster sends his lawyer along with Ellis' man to...
Inheriting his father's alcoholism, Lawyer Tom Gallatin goes into the woods to rehabilitate himself. Once there, he loses his way and then meets Jane Loring, who is also lost. They are attracted to each other, but when Jane offers him a drink from a flask, Tom takes more than just a few sips, and...
Lois Fox, upon whose shoulder is branded a Chinese idiograph resembling the letters "A. Y.," is rescued from a gang of Chinese ruffians by Brice Ferris. His servant Ming, in attempting to steal from her finger a ring that bears a mysterious green seal, is killed, and soon afterward a stranger named...
An illiterate, uncouth brute rises to power during the Russian Revolution, plots to wreak vengeance on all who cross him, and incites the peasantry to burn the city.
At the urging of his wealthy grandfather, Willie O'Donovan is sent to boarding school by his preoccupied parents, neither of whom shows much interest in the lad. At school, where he falls in love with Mary, a country girl, Willie hears that his grandfather has died and left him $50,000,000 to be...
Velma is unhappily married to Sam Patton, a millionaire roué. Aboard his yacht bound for the South Seas, Sam pays more attention to his guests than to his wife, and she flees when he attempts to force liquor on her. A sudden paralytic stroke renders him helpless, and she believes him dead. A storm...
Richard Sears, "The Power" of the city, arranges for alderman Luke Simms to be elected mayor so that he can control him, but Simms refuses to go against the public interest.
J. Warren Kerrigan plays the standard Vance hero, a devil-may-care Irish mercenary named Terrence O'Rourke. While knocking about in India, O'Rourke comes into possession of the Pool of Flame, a valuable ruby stolen from a Hindu temple. Typically, whosoever possesses this gem is marked for death,...
The rancher Jeff Bransford returns to his ancestral acres and finds them heavily mortgaged and about to be foreclosed and is defended by hired men with guns.
Sam Bass receives a summons to testify before a grand jury, and not realizing that the matter concerns sheep-stealing he assumes it to concern the murder of his brother, Will.
Gabrielle Picard (Elda Hall) and Pierre Dupont (Rupert Julian) are lovers in a small French village in the early 1870s; Gabrielle's brother Anatole (Kingsley Benedict) is Pierre's best friend. The two young men are called to service by their country and go to Algiers. Anatole becomes the bugler and...
Left alone and penniless after her father dies, Eileen Orton attempts suicide. Douglas Seward, who must be married to obtain the position he seeks, befriends Eileen and offers to support her if she will pose as his wife.
After the death of her father, a young girl goes to live with her uncle in Kentucky. She immediately comes into conflict with her uncle's shrewish wife.
"Katy" Didd holds up the stage in which his sweetheart, Alice Mason, is traveling to her wedding to Prince Tetlow, to whom her guardian insists that she be married. Katy hides her at his ranch, but Tetlow finds her and abandons Katy in the desert.