In The Struggle (Broncho, 1913) a prospector and his son Bob depart from home in the morning, while the wife, at home, offers food to a passing stranger. His shifting eyes reveal his nature; he assaults her, and although her husband and son return in time to save her, the father is killed in the ensuing fight. The stranger gets away, but five years later Bob, now a government scout, recognizes the stranger just as he is accused of cheating at cards.
Tom Chatterton is called a coward because he will not enlist in the Home Guard during the Civil War -- his mother is dying and he does not wish to leave while she is still alive. When she dies and the Yankees attack, he seizes command of the Home Guard and leads them to victory, proving himself a hero and dying in the process.
When the Civil War begins, young Billy runs away from home to enlist in the Northern Army as a drummer; he's wounded in battle and taken prisoner. He manages to escape and deliver an important message to his commanding officer, but loses his life in the process. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2007.
Mildred is staying with her grandfather, Civil War veteran Jabez Burr, when she receives a letter from her father. Her father has re-married, and will be bringing his new wife home soon. But when Mildred's stepmother finds out that Jabez drinks, she takes a dislike to him, and begins to resent his closeness with Mildred...
An Easterner wins his battles in the West by using his fists.
A wife discovers her husband's double life and she herself plunges into the whirl of vice.
The Reaping is a 1913 silent film.
The setting is an early American village, where a young Quaker woman, Priscilla, is in love with the schoolmaster, John Hart. The local minister, Rev. Cole, who calls on her at her cabin with flowers, is an unwelcome suitor. In revenge, he has "blue laws" passed, among them is one requiring attendance at church on Sunday. Priscilla refuses to comply with the law and is arrested. After being plunged in and out of water and pilloried, she is banished from the colony. John goes with her. They are attacked by Indians and John is badly wounded. Priscilla manages to get back to the village in time to warn the Puritans of an impending attack. They defeat the Indians after a desperate battle. The Rev. Cole, who has been mortally wounded, begs Priscilla's forgiveness and the Puritans make amends for their harsh treatment of her.
A story of Puritan village life. The son of a minister wins a girl away from her devoted fisherman. Orphaned, she is adopted by the minister, and when her child is born refuses to reveal the father's name. She is cast out by the minister and scorned by the people. When her child is dying the fisherman comes back to her with unfaltering love, and the minister's son meets a tragic death at the hands of the Indians.
A Western tale of revenge and redemption.
A white slaver impersonates the heir to an English estate, but the rightful heir reappears and exposes the imposter.
Tom Carson, a southerner, with his daughter, Grace, is the keeper of the Grey Sentinel Lighthouse. John Adams, the sweetheart of Grace, returns from West Point and joins the southern cause; he, however, spying for the Union Army. A fierce battle takes place between the Confederate and Union forces in which the former are victorious. Hal Peters, a southern officer and an admirer of Grace, is surprised to find among his captives. John Adams.
Rev. Horace Brightray, pastor of a New England village church, is ordered by his physician to seek another climate. He goes to Agua Caliente, where he attempts to hold services in the hotel dining room, but nobody attends excepting the hotel clerk and maid, and a dance hall girl, Bubbles. The proprietor of the Legal Tender saloon is very bitter toward Horace and commands them not to attend services. Horace is soon out of funds and is ejected from the hotel. Sick and hopeless, he goes to the Legal Tender and slaps Frosty across the face with his hat, feeling sure it will mean death to him.
Johnny Firth is a young prize fighter who, because of wine, woman and song, is knocked out. He leaves for the west with his manager, who is broke, because of Johnny's defeat. They arrive in Arizona and Johnny beats up a big bully there named Mason, because he has stolen from an old character called Nutty Ike, his bag of nuggets. Nutty Ike introduces the two men to his daughter and makes them his partners in a gold mine he has discovered in the desert. Mason trails them and there is a big fight at the mine, also in the interior.
Jim Owens, a sergeant in the Union army, finds the body of a dead Confederate, whose resemblance to himself is so great that he is startled. He makes an examination of the man's clothes and finds a letter addressed to John Calhoun, 7th Regiment, Virginia Volunteers. The letter is from the man's mother, telling him that her world is very narrow now that she has lost her eyesight. Never having known a mother's love, Owens decides to impersonate Calhoun, feeling that the mother will not recognize that he is not her son, now that she is blind.
Pinto Ben is a pink-nosed cow-pony. A hundred head of cattle are rounded up for beef to be shipped alive to Chicago. Ben and his master, with Segundo Jim, are put in charge. In the Chicago stockyards, men who don't know range-bred cattle from a herd of mountain goats, calmly inform Jim and Ben's master that the steers are to be driven into the big pen. At the same instant two or three stock hands run behind the herd and begin shouting and waving their arms to start the cattle. The beasts, a thousand strong, with horns and hoofs beating the air, bellowing their rage, glaring with bloodshot eyes, thunder into the chute. The two men in front prepare for their death ride. Suddenly Pinto Ben flattens himself before a high, iron-bound gate, and leaps. The pony cleans the gate. The great wave of scorching breath falls back on the other side. Ben's master finds himself sitting on the ground, the head of his dying horse in his lap.
Jim Black, learning that his rival, David Durard, son of Colonel Durard, wealthy Southern wholesale grocers, has won the heart of Marion, plans to separate the lovers before war breaks out.
IN THE SWITCH TOWER stars Walter Edwards (who also directed) as Bill Wharton, a middle-aged alcoholic who was once a leading engineer with a railroad. Wharton is estranged from his son Joel (Frank Borzage), who now works as an executive with the railroad, but Frank does send him money through Bill's longtime friend, Louis Hall (Robert Hall).
John Zeldon, the newly elected State senator and pledged to fight for the Miners' Bill, requiring the installation of new safety devices in the coal mines, in his speech to the miners the night before his departure, assures them that they can count on him to the last ditch.On his arrival in the capital he is taken up by Mr. Whalen, the brains of the lobby and secretly its chief, who flatters John and invites him out with a brilliant set of men and women who make a lion of him in order to gain his vote against the proposed bill. John's head is turned by their flattery and when Hazel Flemming, his fiancée and star reporter on his home paper, comes to the capitol for an interview with John, she is amazed to find him wavering and realizes the fight is lost unless she can make him realize the mistake he is making. To do this she has a phantom extra printed telling in thrilling headlines of a horrible accident in the coal mines, wherein 200 miners have lost their lives
Two-Gun Hicks is a silent western.
