Ben Hur 1907
The first adaptation of Lew Wallace's novel, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ.
The first adaptation of Lew Wallace's novel, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ.
Jack Hoxie and Marin Sais star in this 'American Girl' short. A courageous young woman must clear her boyfriend after he is framed for a hold-up.
Two tramps hold up small-town Ferndale's railway station night operator Helen, lock her in a closet, and escape. Later, standing on a bridge over the freight yards, Helen sees the two bandits aboard an outgoing freight and drops onto the roof of the car from above as it crosses underneath. A chase along the roofs of the speeding cars ensues.
The life of Jesus is played out in tableaux shot in the Holy Land.
In this episode everything goes wrong. Helen ends up on the rear observation deck of a runaway express train with the door to the inside closed, with the air-brake of the engine damaged, the engine itself full of steam and inaccessible, and the train speeding ahead on the wrong track.
The scenes are laid in the Hudson Bay country in comparatively recent years and cover the life of a Hudson Bay factor, showing him as a young man assuming his business in the wilderness and, as was common in those days, taking an Indian wife that he had purchased of her father in Indian fashion.
A young Irish boy has fallen in love with a poor girl and wants to marry her, but his mother will stop at nothing, including murder, to see that he marries his rich cousin.
A scientist tries to transfer the personality of a man into his mentally retarded son.
A young man leaves Ireland for America, but doesn't forget home.
The Denton's marital happiness brings home to Randall the loneliness of his own existence. Shortly afterwards, the young man meets Pearl Eltinge, a cabaret singer. Ignorant of the fact that her beauty is a mask for a shallow mind, Randall makes her his wife.
Ham fears he has accidentally killed his landlady so he and Bud go on the run, disguised as a missionary and a cannibal.
The new superintendent's first order on taking the post eliminates the men whom he terms old, which costs "Pop" Bates his job as Helen's relief operator. His next declaration is that active railroad work is no place for women, and Helen is also dropped from the service. While Helen is breaking the news to Bob Bates, the new superintendent is hustling about the road yard speeding up the work. "Put more snap into your switching," he tells the men. A minute later, while he is making an inspection inside a boxcar with defective air brakes, a switching engine rams the car. The force of the impact, heightened by the recent orders, throws the superintendent to the floor stunned, and starts the car on the down grade. In the few moments it is speeding along the road and there is consternation among the men for a washout down the road means that it is headed to certain destruction.
The old musician playing his fiddle in his garret home dreams of his youth and his lost love. As the past unfolds itself he sees his sweetheart, Dolores, forced by her parents to sign a contract of marriage with Don Carlos, and he again reads over in memory her message of farewell: "My on Love, This is my marriage ever, the death day of my soul. I cannot go without one last farewell to you, whom I will never see again. Wait for ma by the lake until you hear the bells chime. Yours in spirit until death, Dolores." Meeting her at the lake as requested, she gives him her old violin, saying, "I have breathed my soul into this violin. Whene'er it plays, it is my soul that speaks."
Baker John Doe develops a hole-less doughnut, but rival Henry Mudguard fears the success of his invention and desperately attempts to steal the secret.
Film 106 in the Hazards of Helen series
Dr. Henry Jekyll experiments with scientific means of revealing the hidden, dark side of man and releases a murderer from within himself.
His weak-willed mother and the son Fred, whom she has spoiled, are the mill-stones around Dan's neck. Ida, who loves him, determines to save him from their influence. The girl is assistant district attorney. Fred is arrested as a cocaine vendor.
Helen, by a courageous leap from a motorcycle, reaches the burning boxcar in which the detectives are imprisoned and succeeds in applying the brakes in time to bring it to a stop and save them from almost certain death.
Rand, a vengeful discharged fireman, tampers with the airbrakes of a large freight locomotive making them useless on the long descent from the summit of Pine Hill to Lone Point the following day. Learning of the impending peril, Helen dashes to a water tower under which the train must pass, climbs out on the spout, leaps onto the roof of one of the cars, and warns the engineer in time. Helen's heroism wins her another offer of marriage, this time from Wadsworth, the freight engineer, but once again she opts for next weeks hazards instead.
On a visit to the State Prison with Superintendent Melvin of the construction camp near Lone Point. Helen gains the friendship of Butler, a former telegrapher who had been wrongfully convicted on circumstantial evidence. Butler is soon to be released and Helen promises to aid him.