Saxophone player Clyde meets a woman named Flowers, and teaches her to dance. He later discovers that gangster boss "Blackjack" is also in love with her. "Blackjack" is also battling gang boss Mike Luego in a violent turf war.
A masked criminal who dresses like a giant bat terrorizes the guests at an old house rented by a mystery writer.
Nora, the waif, is forced to attend school. She warms to her teacher for the way that he defends her against the taunts of some of the students, but when she's made to wear a dunce cap, she flees the schoolhouse in shame. Unsupervised by her alcoholic father, Nora becomes a determined truant, wandering the town during school hours. There she catches the attention of a huckster, who convinces her that they will run away and be married. The schoolmaster, meanwhile, preoccupied by Nora's absence, leaves his other students to go find her. He encounters her at a crossroads, being spirited away by the huckster, and calls the man's bluff by saying that he'll find them a minister.
Agnes, a singer in a country church, is practicing one day when a vaudeville manager hears her and offers her a job. Over the objections of the curate who loves her, she accepts the offer and goes to the city. Later the curate goes to hear Agnes perform and, fearing that her soul is being corrupted by show business, he asks her to return to the small town with him. When she refuses, he is prepared to kill her in order to protect the purity of her soul. This brings about her change of heart, and together they return to the little church.
Known as "Wildflower," Letty Roberts meets Arnold Boyd, a wealthy man who is weary of life in the city.
A man recognizes the thief who had previously robbed him as one of the men involved in an unrelated mob shootout.
Young Kendall struggles for acceptance in the eyes of his wealthy father, who sees him only as a layabout.
Hank Hopkins is a "rube" of the most extreme type, and on the morning of the great Shrine Parade in Los Angeles, he is met by a couple of friends, practical jokers, who make him believe that they can effect his participating in the grand pageant. He telephones his wife to be on the grandstand to see him march by. Mrs. Hopkins receives a great disappointment, but it is slight to what Hank receives when he attempts to get into line.
Part of a 7-part series exploring all aspects of Hollywood.
The adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer.
Billy Garrison, a jockey, is framed and suspended for throwing a face. Depressed, he goes to a bar and eventually gets into a fight. He loses his memory, and is taken to the home of pretty young Sue Desha, who gets him a job as a jockey for her father, Col. Desha. Unfortunately, the man who framed Billy, named Crimmins, finds out he's working for the Sue's father and reveals Billy's past to the colonel. Complications ensue.
In the home of ease and refinement a new life opens to the girl. She no longer is obliged to resist the sordid way of poverty and sin. The woman's indulged son, overcome by his weakness and debt, robs his mother. It is then the girl saves the home from disgrace.
The young lover leaving home at the opening of the war to join the Confederate Army, tells his brother to take care of his fatherless sweetheart during the perilous times which are to follow. But the brother weakens and fails to be true to his trust. He permits her to believe that her lover is dead. Caught in the neighborhood, however, between the lines of the enemy, the brother appears before them at the crucial moment. In retaliation the false brother turns informer. Both forces are aroused to arms and during the attack upon the girl defending her wounded lover and family alone in the negro's cabin retribution comes in the form of a stray bullet.
In the apartment hotel lived the aspiring maid, whose solicitude maintained order in the bachelor's apartment. He was her ideal, and the all-adoring bell-boy was firmly but gently given to understand that maids who read "Heliotrope Glendening's Advice to Young Ladies" look higher than ice-water toters. A compromising complication, however, with an unexpected visit from a beautiful lady, quite convinces the aspiring one that wealthy young bachelors may be the grandest men ever, but their aspirations, when it comes to the crucial test, are not for chambermaids. Science influences his actions so much that he gets into trouble with the police.
His mind perverted by the many lies forced upon him, Lang becomes an outcast from the Labor Union. In order to reinstate himself he conceives a plot to do away with the owner of the iron works, an infernal machine stuffed in a turkey's breast. The story tells how the turkey found its way to a table where there was more love than plenty.
An abusive father and husband attends a play one night and sees that the "villain" in the piece does to his family exactly what he is doing to his own family.
Nine-year-old Nedda is a direct descendant of the Trevors, a family that can trace its roots back to the reign of King Charles I. Alas, the Trevors suffer severe financial reverses, and Nedda is yanked from the luxury of her ancestral home in Britain to be raised on New York's Lower East Side. Ten years later, the grown-up Nedda stands accused of the murder of her mother.
Angela comes to Hollywood with only two things: Her dream to become a movie star, and Grandpa. She leaves an Aunt, a brother, Grandma, and her longtime boyfriend back in Centerville. Despite seeing major movie stars around every corner, and knocking on every casting office door in town, at the end of her first day she is still unemployed. To her horror, when she arrives back at their hotel, she finds that Grandpa has been cast in a movie by William DeMille and quickly becomes a star during the ensuing weeks. Her family, worried that Angela and Grandpa are getting into trouble, come to Hollywood to drag them back home. In short order Aunt, Grandma, brother, boyfriend and even the parrot become superstars, but Angela is still unemployed...
The story of the massacre of an Indian village, and the ensuing retaliation.
The travails of a third-rate traveling theatre company and its wardrobe lady / maid who dreams of stepping in as their melodramatic production's (Flaming Women) female lead.
A feud between the families of Gourd and Fork Ranches
To fulfill a dying mother's bequest for her daughter, the town pastor purchases the daughter a stylish hat, and gossip spreads through the town.
A famous opera singer lost her voice when her son was born, and has drowned her sorrows in drink. When a murder is committed near her house, she invents a story in order to get herself back in front of the public again. However, the story she comes up with results in her son being arrested for the murder.
Aviation enthusiast Josephine rescues her suitor, Chubby, from an angry mob with the help of Slim and his airplane.
Former newsboy and jockey Joe Braxton, becomes a millionaire rancher and decides to visit New York. He soon becomes the prey of swindler Tom Linson and socialite Viola Grayson. Linson defrauds Braxton's old employer, Colonel Downs, and attempts to corrupt Eleanor, the colonel's daughter. When Eleanor learns that Linson intends to destroy Joe on the stock exchange, she warns him, disregarding Linson's threat to ruin her reputation. Eleanor is too late, but Joe recovers his losses by riding Mongrel to victory in the Kentucky Futurity, after having stacked his last dollar on the horse's success.
A lonely young woman lives with her strict father who forbids her to wear make-up. One day at an ice cream social, she meets a young man you seems interested in her. However, unknown to her, he is a burglar who is only interested in breaking into her father's house. One night she is awakened by a noise.
When the Great Chief's body is placed before the funeral pile by his mourning braves, his sacred blanket is covered over it and a sentinel left to watch that this, his last resting place, is not desecrated. The tribe has just departed for their village when a mountain outlaw appears and succeeds in stealing the blanket, having given the sentinel doctored whiskey. When the Indians discover this they exile the unfaithful sentinel until he can recover the blanket.
A Mack Sennett comedy short starring Mack Sennett, Kate Toncray & Mabel Normand.
Mabel seems to be working ironing dresses in a dress shop when something catches her attention in a newspaper. Apparently, it is an ad on becoming a detective. Mabel goes rushing off to a Detective school run by Fred Ward.
Two men are released from prison after having served their sentences. One is determined to go straight and stay out of trouble, but his fellow ex-con has other ideas, and his plans wind up spelling trouble for both of them.
John Howard Payne leaves home and begins a career in the theater. Despite encouragement from his mother and his sweetheart, Payne begins to lead a life of dissolute habits, and this soon leads to ruin and misery. In deep despair, he thinks of better days, and writes a song that later provides inspiration to several others in their own times of need.
Ramona, residing on her wealthy Spanish adoptive mother's rancho in California, falls in love with the Indian Alessandro. When Ramona is denied permission to marry Alessandro, the lovers elope, only to find a life of great hardship and unhappiness amidst the greed and injustice of the white landowners.
Holding a grudge against Robert Torrens and his wife, who live in Italy, a member of the Mafia kidnaps their infant daughter Lois. Fifteen years later, after having been raised by Italian peasants, Lois, now called Peppina, dresses as a boy and stows away on a ship to America in order to avoid a marriage to a particularly loathsome count. While aboard ship she befriends Hugh Carroll, an assistant district attorney, who arranges first-class transportation for the "boy." In New York, she once again meets her kidnapper, who fled to America after the crime. He forces Peppina to maintain the masculine disguise and to pass counterfeit bills for him, for which she is arrested. Peppina gladly exposes the kidnapper's operation to the authorities, one of whom, Hugh, recognizes her as the "boy" he met on the ship. Then, once the kidnapper has been apprehended, Peppina is reunited with her parents, after which she and Hugh, who has finally discovered that she is female, get married.
Pepita, a radiant and merry Spanish beauty, and her playful brother Jose, witness their mother, whose faded beauty led her husband to abandon her for another, plunge a dagger into her breast.
An elderly woman looks back on the special times in her life, thinking especially about her now-departed husband and the things they did together. Though it is sad that these times are now gone, she is comforted by her memories and by the hope of sharing in the lives of her child and grandchildren.
The edition of Screen Snapshots celebrates 25 years of production. It looks at the content of edition #1, then a tribute to movie people who have died in those 25 years. Finally there are tributes to the Screen Snapshots series by Cecil De Mille, Walt Disney, Louella Parsons and Rosalind Russell.
Tom Brown shows up at Harvard, confident and a bit arrogant. He becomes a rival of Bob McAndrew, not only in football and rowing crew, but also for the affections of Mary Abbott, a professor's daughter.
Two spinsters on their way to church, are accosted by a couple of burly tramps. When Mabel is called to the church meeting with her mother, she sends Muggsy a note asking him to meet her after the service so he may walk home with her. Muggsy is there on time, however, the old ladies are afraid to make the return trip unaccompanied. The pastor asks that a man escort them home. Poor Muggsy gets chosen, and when the trio reach the deserted part of the road, the tramps again appear.
Davy Glidden is the son of the adjutant general in charge of an old soldier's home in a small town near the Top Copper mine. Davy idolizes Capt. Jerico Norton, an aged veteran of the home who entertains the boy with stories of his exploits in the Civil War. When Mrs. Edward and her daughter Flora come to visit Mrs. Glidden, Davy is smitten by Flora but she ignores him. Davy is bursting with patriotism by the stories told to him by the captain and is eager of doing something noble to attract Flora's attention. He finds the opportunity to accomplish both goals when he overhears two German spies, Carl Bender and Frank Schmale, plotting to create havoc in the mine by calling a strike and then dynamiting the mine. Enlisting the aid of his friend Capt. Norton, Davy provides the means for the old soldiers to serve their country once again.
A young wild girl, Fanchon, lives in a forest with her eccentric grandmother who is suspected by the villagers of being a witch. The unkempt Fanchon suffers from her grandmother's sorceress reputation. One day the girl rescues a boy from drowning and they fall in love, but Fanchon won't agree to marry him unless his father asks her. A year later the boy has fallen very ill and it is only the presence of the enchanting Fanchon that helps to restore his health.
Biff Dugan, the eldest son of a poor family living in a tenement on the squalid East Side of New York, leads a gang of hoodlums, among whose members is his brother Porky. Their sister Jess is a consumptive whose health was ruined in a sweatshop. During a melee in a mission run by reformer Henry Davis, the Dugan gang encounters Billy Drew and his sister Cora, newcomers to the city. Porky saves Cora from the unwelcome attentions of Biff's rival, Spike Golden, and the two fall in love. Later, when Spike is killed in a gang war, Biff is wrongfully convicted of the murder and executed in the electric chair. Porky, who served a short term in prison for his part in the crime, comes back to the city to find that Jess has died and Cora has returned to the country.
Short drama about the commandment "honour your father and your mother".
Freckles, a one-armed orphan tired of being tormented by others runs away eventually finding a place as a watchman in the timber camp, The Limberlost. He falls in love with Angel but feeling unworthy of her keeps his feelings silent until a near catastrophic incident reveals the bond between them.
A young girl living in Salem attracts the attentions of The Puritan. After he's brushed off by the girl, he becomes furious and desiring revenge, declares to a council of elders that the girl and her mother are witches.
An ambitious race driver who is not allowed to compete decides to outwit his competitors.
Liberty Belles, silent comedy film from 1914 starring Dorothy Gish, Jack Pickford, and Gertrude Bambrick.
Johnny Spivins adores Milly Fields, but since he's only an errand boy at the local grocery, he can't get her to look his way. Things get even worse when a city boy comes to town and boards at the Fields' home.
An orphan boy from the Kentucky hills joins the Union Army and rescues his adopted family from Morgan's raiders. He learns his real identity when he returns after the war.
Most of the scenes are laid in a parrot-and-monkey country in South America, a land where "it is always after dinner." The Llano Kid, a Texas bad man, flees there from justice. The consul persuades him to play the long-lost son of a Castilian family, and tattoos a coat of arms on the back of the Kid's hand to make the deception complete. The Kid is taken into the household, trusted and loved by the gladdened mother. For the first time he has a home. The romance develops. And when the time comes to rob and flee he has too much manhood to break the loving mother's heart. The surprise comes when it is revealed that the man the Kid killed in Texas was the real son.
A cabin-boy gets to take center stage during a riotous adventure story involving mutineers and pirates and buried treasure.
Jim Joyce runs a garage with old Abner Hope. When Hope's granddaughter, Mary Ellen, comes to visit, Joyce falls in love with her. Joyce has a number of bizarre inventions and he dreams of harnessing the nearby falls for power, but he can't get any financing from the town banker.
John Howard Payne leaves home and begins a career in the theater. Despite encouragement from his mother and his sweetheart, Payne begins to lead a life of dissolute habits, and this soon leads to ruin and misery. In deep despair, he thinks of better days, and writes a song that later provides inspiration to several others in their own times of need.
Silent version of the Twain tale, filmed in Pleasanton, California. A Missouri boy (Jack Pickford) encounters his first love (Clara Horton) and bucks responsibilities to find adventure with his friend, Huck Finn (Robert Gordon).
In the opening of this subject we find the callow youth as he points towards the city's spires, exclaiming to his dear old mother, "Mother, there in the big city is my sphere. There will I turn the world over." Off he goes cityward, ambitious and presumptuous, and perhaps we may add reckless. Alas, the city's whirl is quite a change from the simple quiet life in the country and the youth falls a victim to the snares that beset the unsophisticated.
A lost film. Hiram Flint, a young gambler and horseman, loves Madge, the daughter of James Spotwood but she repulses him. He buys a mortgage on the farm of Spotwood. The interest on the mortgage is due to be paid but Owen, Spotwood's son gambles and loses the money at roulette. James Spotwood has given to Owen a thoroughbred and they enter it in a race at the county fair in an effort to get back the money lost. Flint also has a horse entered and drugs the Spotwood rider on the eve of the race.
A lost film. A girl with old-fashioned values becomes a modern sophisticate.
After conducting a raid on a Rebel camp, a Czarist officer discovers that his wife has joined the revolutionaries. Out of loyalty to his wife, the officer resigns his commission and escapes with her to America. Several years later, the ex-officer is gainfully employed as a waiter in a Russian restaurant. For the sake of his grown son, who is engaged to marry a wealthy socialite, our hero pretends to be a man of great wealth and prestige. The truth is revealed in the final scene, but "Waiter Number 5" is saved from disgrace by the timely arrival of his former superior officer.
A young girl, Anemone, who lives with her Aunt is abducted by a crude family of Virginia mountain moonshiners. A fight between two of the young male relatives decides who will marry the girl. Lancer is the winner and marries Anemone against her will. She is reunited some time later with her Aunt, but when she learns Lancer is in dire trouble she returns and stays by his side, realizing she had always been in love with him.
Just before she dies, an elderly married woman stashes the horde of money she's secretly accumulated beneath the false bottom of an old shipping trunk. After her death, her husband, believing himself penniless, has to leave their old home and move in with his son's family, where he's treated with no respect or consideration. Also on the scene is a newly-hired kindly young housekeeper. She and the old gentleman become close friends and eventually run away together (taking the old shipping trunk with them).
The two brothers and their adopted daughter of the household grew up from childhood together. The girl and the younger brother were childhood sweethearts. His elder brother was considered the bad man and dead shot of the hills. The younger brother has been living in the valley for a long time and returns home to his family. He is now refined, educated, and, of course, a revelation to the little girl, who, though betrothed to the elder brother, is strongly attracted by him. Hence there is a renewal of childhood affection which the elder brother does not take kindly to.
A love story set among Native Americans.
A lonely widower living in the Italian quarter of the city, whose only solace since the death of his wife is his little child, reluctantly becomes a member of a secret society existent among his countrymen. The active members of this society have observed the success of another Italian and feel that their they should share in his wealth. They send him a demand for $5,000, ostensibly to pay for the expenses of their society. The rich man is defiant of their demand, and consequently the society decides to kill him-- electing the newest member, the widower, to do the deed.
A terrible toothache causes Jack Robin to stop his automobile in front of the home of Dorothy Mason. Noticing a flat tire, Jack attaches his automatic pump and forgets about it as he listens enthralled to Dorothy's singing. When the sound of the burst tire brings Dorothy running out, Jack feigns injury so he can be nursed by her. After he leaves the house, and Dorothy's father discovers some important invention plans missing, Harlan Graves, Dorothy's suitor, suggests that Jack stole them. Jack, suspecting Graves, breaks into Graves' home to clear himself and meets a real burglar, "Spider" Kelly, who adopts Jack as his guide. They blow up a safe at a house party where Jack suspects the plans to be hidden. The papers are found, Graves is arrested and Spider, disappointed that Jack made such a mess in blowing the safe, goes off, leaving Dorothy and Jack happily alone.
The story of David Harum, a small-town banker, and how what he does and who he is affects the lives of everyone in his town, whether they--or he--realize it.
Harry Bullway is a careless young man, always after a good time. He nearly runs over a blind beggar with his car, but he shows no remorse. In response to his heartlessness, the beggar curses him, saying, "May you always have everything that you want."
A Mexican is thrown out of a bar by a young prospector and swears to get even. Later, he kidnaps the prospector's wife. In the meantime, a group of drunkards shoot and kill an old Indian; The son, a brave, vows revenge and asks the tribal chief for help. When the Indians attack both prospector and Mexican, these two make a temporary truce and join forces against the common enemy.
Jack Pickford got his own production company when his sister Mary signed a huge contract with First National, and this was its first product. the story takes place in the Blue Ridge mountains, where the Appersons and the Yartons have an ongoing feud.
Jack Joyce, who worked in old Abner Hope's garage, was always dreaming of big schemes, but had no capital with which to realize them. Abner Hope, who is regarded as a "queer one," tell Jack that the world will end on September 1st, and gives him his savings to spend during the few remaining weeks. As a result, Jack becomes a king of power, and becomes engaged to Curt Horndyke's daughter, although he loves Mary Ellen, Abner's granddaughter. Then comes the climax - the end of the world - which, with its dénouement, makes one of the most fascinating endings ever screened.
Tom and Ethel separately decide to go bathing in a river. Pranksters switch their clothes and they each have to dress up as the opposite sex.
A mother and her son's lives are upended by the arrival of a wealthy flapper to their small New England fishing village.
Jimmie Dexter is on his way to college when his mother discovers that her stocks have stopped paying dividends. Jean Hilton, who has always loved Jimmie, offers to secretly stake him using her own inheritance. So Jimmie goes off to college, none the wiser, and gets tangled up with vampy cabaret singer Diana Parish.
To Walter Holden since the death of his wife, falls the responsibility of raising his only child.
Seventeen year old William Sylvanus Baxter has fallen madly in love with young coquette, Lola Pratt. After spending all of his money on the fickle girl, she runs off with an older man. William now heartbroken, contemplates suicide, until a friend from childhood, May Parcher, pays a visit and William decides to fall in love with her.
Jed is a hillbilly in love with pretty Emmy Lou who is forced into marriage with her dreadful cousin Aaron. Jed interrupts the marriage and Aaron is accidently shot. Jed stands trial for the murder but is acquitted when almost everyone admits to the murder.
A rich nobleman steals a perfume merchant's wife just prior to the French Revolution, in which the perfumer is a leader of the peasants. His priest made him swear an oath to leave vengeance to God, however.
This ill-tempered gentleman accompanies his wife to the seashore, but being so insanely jealous of her makes the stay there rather unpleasant. First of all, he refuses to go bathing in the surf with her, and she, despite his command not to, goes in alone. Towering with rage at his wile's defiance, he gets himself into several embarrassing positions. In fact he makes a fool of himself generally.
Orphan Pip discovers through lawyer Mr. Jaggers that a mysterious benefactor wishes to ensure that he becomes a gentleman. Reunited with his childhood patron, Miss Havisham, and his first love, the beautiful but emotionally cold Estella, he discovers that the elderly spinster has gone mad from having been left at the altar as a young woman, and has made her charge into a warped, unfeeling heartbreaker.
A young girl is presented, on her birthday, with a beautiful pearl necklace, the oldest heirloom in the family. Her maid carefully locks it up in the bureau drawer; but the next morning the necklace is missing. Naturally, the maid is accused, but she denies all knowledge of the whereabouts of the necklace, and puts the blame on the washerwoman, who had called at the time she was locking the jewels up; in consequence, the washerwoman is arrested, and her little son, thrown on his own resources, finds employment with the milkman. Two or three days later, while delivering milk at a fashionable residence, he sees a young lady walking in her sleep, out across the lawn, and follows her to a hollow tree, where he sees her dig up the jewels, which she has hidden on a previous somnambulistic promenade. Of course, this soon leads to the straightening out of all the difficulty. This short is presumably lost.
Jack Joyce, who worked in old Abner Hope's garage, was always dreaming of big schemes, but had no capital with which to realize them. Abner Hope, who is regarded as a "queer one," tell Jack that the world will end on September 1st, and gives him his savings to spend during the few remaining weeks. As a result Jack becomes a king of power, and becomes engaged to Curt Horndyke's daughter, although he loves Mary Ellen, Abner's granddaughter. Then comes the climax - the end of the world - which, with its dénouement, makes one of the most fascinating endings ever screened.
Madison Hale, a wealthy American financier, is bidding against Govrian Texler, the financial advisor to the King Stephen III of Maritizia, for the concession to run a transcontinental railway through the country. After Madison's son, Dick, completes his college education, he decides to visit Maritizia, the birthplace of his great-grandfather. There he meets Princess Irenia and they fall in love, arousing the jealousy of Ferdinand Vaslof, Govrian's nephew, who is also in love with the princess.
It's Bob Allen's twenty-first birthday. His mother and his brother Jack, a policeman present him with a cap, personalized with his initals in the lining. Jack then goes to work and Bob goes out also. Later in the evening, Jack is called to the scene of a robbery, where he finds the cap with his brother's initials. Dismayed by the idea that his brother is a thief, he goes home and confronts Bob with the evidence. Though it breaks their mother's heart, Jack does his duty and leads his brother out in handcuffs.
John Ashby and Allene Houston, two neighboring ranchers, are in love, but their parents' violent dispute over the route of the new X. Y. Z. Railroad eventually drives them apart. Colonel Houston and the elder Ashby are killed in a fight, leaving John and Allene to continue the feud, John accepting a job with the railroad company and Allene swearing never to cross their property.
A young man and a young woman, each unlucky in love, determine never to marry. But Cupid (and two separate bands of misinformed revelers) has other ideas.
When Colonel Archer, the commanding officer of the military post, refuses to lend money to his second-in-command, Captain Waring, Waring obtains the money from Brent Lindsay, from the nearby mining town, in exchange for his promissory note. Both Waring and Lindsay court Floyd Bingham, the daughter of a retired colonel, but Floyd learns that Lindsay is involved with Queen, a dancing girl.
"It's in the surprise" that great plays are made and battles won, and our tenderfoot friend, appreciating this, pulls a victory that is amazing.
Walton the pharmacist, convicted of selling drugged candy to children, is released from prison through the intercession of political “boss” Lee O'Neil. Unfettered by conscience, Walton opens a disreputable pool hall and hires Tony, an Italian ex-convict, as a pool hustler. The pool hall becomes a meeting place for criminals and naïve young men, including Elmer, a bank messenger, and Bingham, the neglected son of wealthy parents. One night at a cabaret, Bingham and Tony meet O'Neil’s daughter, Hazel. Tony borrows Bingham’s car without permission and takes Hazel for a late-night drive. After Bingham reports the theft to police, a chase ensues, and Hazel is killed when the car is struck by a locomotive. While detectives wait for Tony at the pool room, they thwart a pair of thugs who attempt to rob Elmer. The bank messenger confesses that he learned to gamble at the pool room, prompting the authorities to force Walton out of business. Tony survives the wreck and is taken into custody.
In order to win the hand of the girl he loves, Ed Swinger creates a phony business to fool her father.
A Scots-Irish lad comes to America hoping to find his fortune. On the sea voyage he meets and falls for a lovely young girl, but they are parted on arrival. Years later, in the Kentucky town where he has settled and prospered, he meets the girl again, and both sparks and complications arise.
John Humperdink Stover, otherwise known as "The Varmint" for his pestiferousness or as "Dink" when in special favor, was expelled from a boarding school and sent to Lawrenceville Academy. On the stage on the way to the school he meets a silent man whom Dink sizes up for a salesman and he proceeds to wax eloquent on the subject of his past career and the reason he was expelled from his previous school.
The old Atwell home is said to be haunted, and Jeremy Foster, the gardener--who is actually the head of a band of thieves that use the house for a hideout--does his best to keep the superstition alive. Despite the rumors, impoverished sisters Lois and Alice Atwell decide to move into the empty family home. They take possession the same night that Ted Rawson is ordered to explore the place as an initiation rite by his fraternity.
Young boxer Jack Ranney agrees to challenge 'Young Kilroy' and knocks him out with his first punch. When he is told that Kilroy is dead, Jack hurriedly heads West and finds a job on a ranch, boasting to all the fellows that he is a killer; unimpressed, they call him a greenhorn. Meanwhile, Jack's sweetheart Mary learns that Kilroy is alive, and she heads West to tell Jack the news, arriving just in time to see him single-handedly save the ranch from a raid by the notorious Lopez Cabrillo and his entire gang.
Bashful stenographer Bunker Bean, works for wealthy businessman Jim Breede by day and by night theosophist Prof. Balthasar, who convinces Bean that he is the reincarnation of Napoleon and, more remotely, of the great Egyptian king Ramses. His courage much bolstered by this revelation, Bean begins to deport himself with unaccustomed dignity and becomes a regular visitor to old Breede's estate, where he successfully courts the boss's daughter, "The Flapper."
The Merediths, in reality much in love, have quarreled and agreed to separate but cannot agree as to the disposition of their little daughter Beryl. All this is opportune for the plans of Spider, a notorious kidnapper and his gang, who plot to steal Beryl while her nurse flirts in the park with one of their pals.