An optimistic girl survives city life as a shoe shine till she ends up in children's court. Just as she helps her geranium, Sally, to grow, a kindly judge sees her potential and takes her to his mother's country home to flourish.
Gladys Hulette
as The Shine Girl
Wayne Arey
as Judge Clayton
Kathryn Adams
as Margaret Kenyon
Ethelmary Oakland
as Baby Kenyon
John Cook
as John Kenyon
Blanche Davenport
as
Job Abramonoff, the leader of a Jewish community in Russia, is arrested for the ritual murder of Sonja Mulnikow, the little sister of Sascha, a gentile and the childhood friend of Job's daughter Manya. Sascha, who is sympathetic to the plight of the Jews, is led to point the accusing finger at Job against his better judgment. He reads a book, "The Philosophy of Race Prejudice," which tells how Maneth, the Egyptian high priest, tried to dupe Alexander the Great into believing that his young friend Cassander was the victim of such a sacrifice by the Jews. Convinced of his error, Sascha tries to save the Abramonoff family and stop the pogrom that began when Job was arrested. Sonja is revealed to be alive and well, but it is too late: the mob has broken into the prison and stoned Job to death. Horror-stricken, Sascha confesses to Manya that he was prejudiced and asks forgiveness.
Thrown out of her home by a jealous husband, a woman sinks into degradation. Twenty years later, she is charged with killing a man bent on harming her son. The son, unaware of who the woman is, takes the assignment to defend her in court.
Wallace Phillips is tricked out of his share of his father's fortune by his brother Gordon. Wallace changes places with his brother and manages to fool even Gordon's wife. A lost film.
Dr. Paul Carrington is a rising young surgeon engaged to selfish socialite Marion Ainsworth who resents the time he devotes to his profession. During an outing, Marion intercepts a crucial emergency hospital message meant for Paul, causing him to miss a vital operation and ruining his professional reputation. Discovering her deceit, Paul shoulders the blame to shield her and flees to a remote tropical island to live in solitude. A year later, Marion sets out to find him but is shipwrecked. She washes ashore on Paul's island, where he divides the land between them, promises to protect her, but strictly forbids her from disturbing him and his work.
An orphan named Innocence leaves her county home after her foster-father dies. She travels to the city and makes a living as a novelist. Subsequently, she has an affair with a painter named Amadis de Jocelyn, who later dumps her.
Life is not easy for a young woman with no parents--her mother died and her alcoholic father abandoned her. Nevertheless, she climbs her way out of the underclass, going from prostitute to wife of a count.
Robert, a young steelworker, lives with his family and George, a good friend who has invented a new method of refining steel and promises Robert that they will split the proceeds if they sell the process to their employer. Robert goes to the company's board of directors and receives what he considers to be a good offer, but his wife June doesn't think it's enough. She talks to the board and persuades them to make George the company president. Now that he's rich, Robert becomes convinced that his wife is having an affair with George, and he embarks on his own affair with a sophisticated, attractive--and ambitious--woman.
Bryce Gilbert convinces his daughter, Virginia, that she should not elope with a casual boyfriend and sends her to Italy to stay with his fiancée, Duchess Bianca.
Andrews, a former shipping clerk, has amassed a fortune in cocaine and therefore discourages his daughter May's romance with Joe, a policeman. Andrews prefers socialite Roger Hastings, whom May marries but soon discovers is a drug addict. While May is recovering from a nervous breakdown precipitated by the knowledge of Roger's addiction, he slips cocaine into her medication. Soon she also is addicted, a fact which Roger delightedly reports to Andrews. Andrews then commits May to a sanitarium and Roger becomes a procurer for a gang of white slavers. When the gang abducts his sister Julia and takes her to Roger's brothel, he turns against them. Julia is released, and after many complications, Roger returns to Andrews' house and, during a struggle, sets the house on fire, killing them both.
A DA's son gets involved in a drug-related murder, and it's up to his father and sister to get him out.
In the Blue Ridge Mountains Postmaster's daughter Sally Haston loves Steve Carey, but wants him to enlist and fight the Germans during the Great War. Steve is unhappy at the training camp Steve argues with his roughneck tentmate Billy Murphy. When Steve deserts to visit Sally she takes him back to the camp, where Captain Roderick Brooke sympathetically explains the purpose of the war. Later, moonshiner James Grogan holes up with a gun to escape the draft and holds Sally prisoner. Her father organizes a posse, but Steve, home on leave, rescues her and announces that he is leaving for Europe to fight for democracy.
Sailor and novelist Leonard Fayne marries wealthy Isabel Grace, whose riches hamper his creative faculties. On the suggestion of sculptress Katherine Dare, Isabel travels to Europe, leaving her husband permission to use her bank account. Leonard steadily declines in her absence and is on the verge of suicide when he meets Ella Klotz, a waif who is about to kill herself because she is going blind. He takes Ella to his studio to care for her, and believing he owes his life to the girl, Leonard once again begins to write. Meanwhile, Isabel is being pursued by an old suitor named Heminway, but realizes that she still loves her husband and returns from Europe. Heminway tries unsuccessfully to keep the couple apart.
A colonel saves a prince's life when he joins a club of men who draw lots to kill one another.
Young Virgie's father, Captain Herbert Cary, is a Confederate soldier. During the Civil War, Virgie, along with her slave Uncle Billy and her mother, are caught between the lines. While Virgie's father is fighting, her family is visited by Union soldiers, including Colonel Morrison, who is assigned to capture her father. Virgie inadvertently helps Morrison, by singing "Dixie" to him and then hiding her father. In the end, Virgie and her father are able to escape, and Virgie even sings "Polly Wolly Doodle" with the Union soldiers and hugs her father, now a Union officer,
A tale of cheating in both love and business.
Belle Bennett plays as the widowed mother of seven children living in Sioux City, Iowa. She moves with them to Cambridge, Massachusetts in order to educate her children with culture and give them every advantage. Bennett, who is unversed in financial matters, soon faces poverty for herself and her children. She takes out a loan from an unscrupulous lender (played by Richard Tucker), who is so impressed by the charm and valiant spirit of Bennett than he neglects to ask her for collateral. Bennett, however, is only able to partially pay her creditors. Marion Nixon, Bennett's eldest daughter, is shocked by her mother's actions and attempts to sacrifice herself to Tucker in order to clear her mother's obligations, even though she is engaged to marry a well to do Harvard undergraduate, played by Rex Bell. This film is believed lost.
Nick Carraway, a young Midwesterner now living on Long Island, finds himself fascinated by the mysterious past and lavish lifestyle of his neighbor, the nouveau riche Jay Gatsby. He is drawn into Gatsby's circle, becoming a witness to obsession and tragedy.
