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Home 1916

1

Bessie Wheaton returns from Europe to find her nouveau riche family has adopted and magnified the worst characteristics of the upper class. Her father spends all of his time at the club, her mother cultivates snobbishness, and her sister thinks only of marrying into royalty. To shake them out of their aristocratic poses, Bessie decides to reflect all of their faults, becoming as lazy as her father and as status conscious as her mother. She even rejects her own sweetheart, Allan Shelby, to lure Count d'Orr away from her sister. Finally, the members of the family confront Bessie, and she angrily tells them that she was only mirroring their behavior. Bessie then runs away, but Allan, with whom she quickly reconciles, brings her back, just as her family acknowledges its recent burlesque of the upper crust.

1916

The Devil

The Devil 1915

1

The Devil, in the guise of a human, meets a young couple who remark upon looking at a Renaissance painting of a martyr that Evil could never triumph over Good. The Devil, taking this as a challenge, decides to bring about the couple's downfall.

1915

The Outcast

The Outcast 1912

1

The prologue shows the life of a trapper, living in the solitude of the forest. He digs a bear trap, which is covered with boughs and grass. An Indian girl, armed with a bow and arrow, creeps close to a wild turkey, which she brings down. As she runs forward to gather up her prey she falls into the trap. Evans, the trapper, finds her there and on lifting her from the pit, finds that she has sprained her ankle, and takes her to his cabin, and makes her as comfortable as possible. As the shades of evening fall and the pain subsides, the girl drops into a slumber, and loath to awaken her, Evans leaves her in possession of his cabin and, wrapped in a blanket, sleeps outside. In the morning, the girl having recovered sufficiently, he lifts her to his horse, and mounting behind her, proceeds to the Indian camp. On the way he is attacked by a trio of Indians, who fire at him from behind a tree, and the trapper brings down one of his assailants.

1912

Matrimony

Matrimony 1915

1

It all begins when Mrs. Rossmore (Dean) discovers that her husband (Howard Hickman) has begun "playing the field" with other women. Too much the lady to make an issue of Mr. Rossmore's infidelities, Mrs. Rossmore nonetheless begins plotting her strategy to win him back. She does so by putting on a great show of pretending not to want her husband to return to the nest.

1915

The Aryan

The Aryan 1916

5.50

Steve Denton, rich from years of prospecting, is fleeced by the citizens of Yellow Ridge. In his rage, he kidnaps the woman most responsible and makes her his slave in a desert hideaway.

1916

The Typhoon

The Typhoon 1914

1

Tokoramo, a Japanese diplomat on a mission to Paris, begins a love affair with Helene, a chorus girl, who subsequently rejects her American fiancé, Richard Bernisky. When the Japanese discover the affair, they try to force Tokoramo to end it, but Helene refuses to stop visiting him. One night, during one of her visits, Bernisky comes to Tokoramo's apartment and, while Helene hides, rebukes her to her lover. After Bernisky leaves, Tokoramo orders Helene out, but when he realizes his love for her, he calls her back. Suddenly, she rejects and insults him to the point that he strangles her. Tokoramo wants to confess his crime, but he must complete his work, and so his countrymen sacrifice a boy, Hironari, who pleads guilty to the murder and eventually is guillotined. In the end, Tokoramo also dies and his colleagues burn his valuable papers in order to protect Japan. -From the TCM.com Database, powered by the AFI.

1914

The Dividend

The Dividend 1916

1

Wealthy John Steele has a handsome young son, Frank, on whom he pins his hopes. But riches lead Frank not into social standing and duty, but into depravity, drug-addiction, criminal activity, and finally to tragedy.

1916

Shell 43

Shell 43 1916

1

William Berner is an English spy who is doing his job behind German lines. While working for the allies, he proves sympathetic toward a German Lieutenant and saves his life. He gives up his own romance for the cause and is killed when the Allies shell the German trench where he happens to be.

1916

The Coward

The Coward 1915

5.70

Set during the American Civil War, Keenan stars as a Virginia colonel and Charles Ray as his weak-willed son. The son is forced, at gunpoint, by his father to enlist in the Confederate army. He is terrified by the war and deserts during a battle. The film focuses on the son's struggle to overcome his cowardice.

1915

The Desert Man

The Desert Man 1917

1

William S. Hart directs and stars in a film that is a typical Western of the era. He plays Jim, a prospector who lands in the town of Broken Hope, and the name pretty much describes its inhabitants. Jim meets and falls in love with Jennie (Margery Wilson), whose father (Walt Whitman) is gravely ill. Jim rounds up a reluctant doctor from another town to tend to the old man, but he dies anyway. The doctor, however, gains Jennie's trust and she runs off with him. Only then does he tell her he's already married. She leaves immediately, but is too proud to go home so she finds work as a dance hall girl at Tacoma Jake's saloon. Jim, meanwhile, finds gold near Broken Hope, which raises its inhabitants' attitudes considerably. But the bad element is still there, and Jim is chasing after a group of kidnappers when he enters Tacoma Jake's saloon and sees Jennie. Jim not only overcomes the bad guys, he gets the girl, too.

1917

The Despoiler

The Despoiler 1915

1

Movie mogul Thomas H. Ince may well have been the director of The Despoiler as indicated by the credits; but since Ince was known far and wide as a glory-hogger, it's also possible that one of his talented lieutenants wielded the megaphone. A Civil War drama, The Despoiler refuses to take sides, demonstrating that there are heroes and villains in both camps. Capturing a small town, Colonel Charles K. French orders his men to reclaim the funds raised for the enemy by the townsfolk. French's drunken, lacivious second-in-command Frank Keenan intends to extort money from the citizens by threatening the virtue of the town's female population.

1915

The Reward

The Reward 1915

1

A poor young boy falls for a chorus girl after he finds out that she is not like the "loose women" she works with. He determines to get her to leave the immoral show-business life and marry him.

1915

The Italian

The Italian 1915

6.14

An immigrant leaves his sweetheart in Italy to find a better life across the sea in the grimy slums of New York.

1915

The Raiders

The Raiders 1916

1

Scott Wells, a lowly clerk in the offices of railroad magnate David Haldeman, overhears a plot to ruin Haldeman.

1916

The Cup of Life

The Cup of Life 1915

1

Sisters Helen and Ruth Fiske work in a department store and live in an East Side tenement. While Ruth is satisfied with her "regular fellow," a mechanic, Helen yearns for fine clothes, wealth, and attention. Ruth marries the mechanic and they struggle for a modest existence. Helen leaves her squalor to be the mistress of wealthy John Ward, despite Ruth's pleas. As the years pass, Helen goes from one man to the next, looking for more luxuries. When James Kellerman, who really loves her, proposes, she laughs at him.

1915

The Deserter

The Deserter 1912

1

A deserting soldier encounters a wagon train of settlers. When they are faced with an Indian attack, he risks court martial to return to the Army post for help.

1912

Hell's Hinges

Hell's Hinges 1916

6.14

When Reverend Robert Henley and his sister Faith arrive in the town of Hell's Hinges, saloon owner Silk Miller and his cohorts sense danger to their evil ways. They hire gunman Blaze Tracy to run the minister out of town. But Blaze finds something in Faith Henley that turns him around, and soon Silk Miller and his compadres have Blaze to deal with.

1916

Princess of the Dark

Princess of the Dark 1917

1

James Herron, a consumptive, has built a shack in the hope that the mountain air may prolong his life. With him dwells his daughter, Fay, whom he idolizes. Fay, who has been blind from her birth, has a wonderful imagination, even the town and its sordid inhabitants become invested with romance and take their part in the stories of adventures that her father reads to her.

1917

The Bargain

The Bargain 1914

5.55

After the bandit known as the Two-Gun Man Jim Stokes robs the stage, he is wounded in his flight from the scene. Recuperating at a ranch, he falls in love with a local settler's daughter. Now wishing to go straight, Stokes encounters trouble when the Sheriff-- not entirely incorruptible-- Catches wind of his location.

1914