The Cheat 1915
A venal, spoiled stockbroker's wife impulsively embezzles $10,000 from the charity she chairs and desperately turns to a Burmese ivory trader to replace the stolen money.
A venal, spoiled stockbroker's wife impulsively embezzles $10,000 from the charity she chairs and desperately turns to a Burmese ivory trader to replace the stolen money.
Despite her well-bred upbringing, Mary had disobeyed her family’s wishes and married Steve Denby, a petty thief whose penchant for booze has left them destitute. Mary answers an ad to be a society woman’s seamstress and is hired by Mrs. Hillary. Mr. Hillary is trying to close a deal with Roger Manning and entices him by inviting him, as a dinner guest, to meet the “prettiest girl in the world.” Upon learning that the “prettiest girl” is indisposed, Mrs. Hillary, realizing that Mary had good upbringing, enlists Mary as a substitute. Naturally Mary and Manning fall in love, and, since the deal still isn’t signed, the Hillary’s hire Mary’s services for the weekend.
Sato (Sessue Hayakawa) faithfully works for importer James Thornton (James Neill). When the old man dies, he leaves his daughter Mildred (Vivian Martin) in Sato's care. Sato loves the girl, but as he is Japanese he cannot hope to ever marry her (at least not in the racially prejudiced era of the early 1900s). Besides, Mildred loves Harry Maxwell (Tom Forman), who was raised alongside her.
Carmen, a maid, steals a locket belonging to the Aragon princess Maria Theresa and sells it to Gaines, a New York art collector, not knowing that the locket contains the clue to the Aragon family fortune's whereabouts. Based on the 1909 Broadway play of the same name by Paul Dickey and Charles W. Goddard.
Hot-blooded gypsy Carmen attempts to seduce Don Jose, a lawman sent to thwart a gang of illegal smugglers in Spain. Carmen's plan backfires when Don Jose's passion for the gypsy girl escalates into a jealous rage as she spurns him for her bullfighter beau, Escamillo, with tragic results.
When a young girl is placed under hypnotism, it's discovered that she has a split personality.
Blamed for the theft of an orphans fund, Captain James Wynnegate flees to the West where he makes a new life with the Indian woman Nat-U-Rich.
Despite her love for penniless Dirck Mead, Lorraine marries wealthy Aaron Roth to save her family from financial ruin.
A good-natured but chivalrous cowboy romances the local schoolmarm and leads the posse that brings a gang of rustlers, which includes his best friend, to justice.
This silent melodrama is set against the 1840s westward migration of the Mormons. Dora, a young woman, and her family are saved from an Indian attack by a Mormon community traveling to Utah. They join the wagon train. Dora is pursued by two men, one a recent convert, the other a scheming elder with a stable of wives. The Mormon elder wants her in his harem. When the mother kills herself from revulsion toward polygamy, the daughter must consider her own future and the man she loves. One of Mae Murray's few surviving films, this was intended by Robert Leonard to be a thoughtful drama about the goods and evils of Mormonism, but today it is generally considered pure anti-Mormon propaganda.
Justus Graves (Theodore Roberts) is a mean-spirited human being, so it's no surprise that when he returns home from a business trip, he finds his wife Elsie (Kathlyn Williams) in the arms of another man (J.W. Johnston). Graves shoots and wounds the man, then hides with his little daughter in Mexico.
Russian brothers Count Boris and Alexis Rabourdin obtain a Japanese coastline defense map and plan to sell it to German agents in London. In America, Alexis schemes to marry wealthy Eve Bertram, who loves him. Boris, meanwhile, falls in love with Christine Lesley, Eve's neighbor whom Eve's brother Guy, an amateur inventor experimenting with explosives, also loves.
Hawaiian prince Tom Garvin (Sessue Hayakawa) receives an American college education and falls in love with Enid Benton (Florence Vidor).
Helen Ainsworth, a young philanthropist, who is interested in a prison reform movement, is engaged to Norman Morris, administrator of the Ainsworth millions and the undiscovered "man higher up," grafting through his influence with prison wardens. He is also having an "affair" with Felice, Helen's maid, an ex-convict.
A saloon hostess loves Ramerrez, a notorious highwayman. Sheriff Jack Rance, who loves the girl too, instigates a card game that will determine the fate of all three of them. If she wins, the girl's lover will go free; but if she loses…
Just prior to America's declaration of war, Margaret Kenwood of the Kenwood Manufacturing Company determines that the plant should produce munitions to support the Allies. Rodney Sheridan, her sweetheart and a vice president of the company, remains unimpressed with Margaret's patriotism until he begins to suspect that the plant's president is involved with a group of German spies.
Pregnant tenement dweller Maggie Schultz is being used by burglars....
William C. DeMille adapted his screenplay for The Woman on the stage play by DeMille's father Henry and David Belasco. The story is set in Washington D.C., courtesy of the Lasky Studio's scenic department. Lois Meredith plays the title character, a woman of questionable morals currently involved with young politician James Neill. Political boss Theodore Roberts hopes to ruin Neill by making public the young man's romantic entanglements.
Two young clerks in a department store meet and fall in love during a seaside vacation in Maine, but part as strangers because, unknown to each other, both had been masquerading as upper-class 'swells', just to see how the better half lives.