A gang of lawless freebooters who terrorized the country and made travel in the mountains a hazardous pastime hold up a stylish landau in which are seated an old gentleman, a duenna, and a pretty young Senora. The inevitable happens; all are relieved of their valuables, and while the gentleman and duenna are sent on their way, the girl is held a prisoner.
Aug 1908
A father wants to marry his daughter to a rich man, but she's in love with someone else. She borrows a tramp's wooden leg, pretending that it's hers, and the disgusted suitor rejects her.
Mar 1909
A wife offers to support her artist husband by teaching piano. She can't find work at the conservatory, and ends up working in a laundry, without telling him the truth. When he discovers her lie, he is determined to leave her, until she is injured and he understands the sacrifice she made for him.
Bob Spaulding, a manly fellow, meets Dr. Rankin and his wife on the street while they are engaged in a violent tiff. The doctor is about to strike his wife when Bob interferes, incurring the resentment of the doctor. During the flurry Mrs. Rankin drops her card case. From a card inside he learns the address and goes there to return it. They meet, and it is a case of love at first sight; but she is a wife, and beyond his reach.
Feb 1909
Two boys, twins, leave the old homestead to seek their fortune in the world. They go divergent roads, and are soon widely separated one from the other, but they grow lonesome and try to find each other's whereabouts, without success. We lose sight of Bill and Dick is seen up against it good and hard. For him the future looks like a chalk ring on a blackboard, until he happens to saunter along the Bowery, where the manager of a dime museum offers him a job to play the gorilla. It looks good so he accepts. It is pretty sort until the astute impresario decides to pull off an innovation: that is, a gorilla and lion in the same cage. Of course Dick objects most strenuously to this arrangement, but his objections are quailed with a treacherous looking run, so he is forced to share the same menagerie hallroom with the lion.
Apr 1909
One of the members of a suicide club learns he has inherited some money, but only after he drew the fatal lot and is expected to kill himself. Presumed to be a lost film.
May 1909
A young man is hired as a guard for an insane asylum. Immediately the inmates start harassing him and he flees. The inmates give chase and they finally capture him and tie him up. The director of the asylum arrives and gives each patient a pie, which they sit down to eat and forget all about the guard.
Nov 1906
With the family of Mr. Phlipp there is employed that wrecker of domestic serenity, a pretty French maid, whose trim figure and cherry lips are simply irresistible. This is all very fine for Phlipp, who is wont to bask in the radiance of her smiles and to sip the honey from her rose-leaved lips. But, alas! his bliss is short-lived, for, the perspicacious Mrs. Phlipp grows suspicious and surprises the erring couple in an osculatory diversion. The meretricious maiden is put to right, and the sinful Phlipp is assailed with most vociferous vituperative verbosity.
Mar 1908
John is seduced and abandoned by a cruel flirt. Later he learns that his friend Frank is engaged to the same woman. He relates his story to Frank and convinces him to jilt her at the altar.
A court fool believes the Duke is after his beautiful daughter, and arranges to have the Duke murdered. The daughter overhears the plot and, disguised in the Duke's cloak, sacrifices her life to save him.
"A pathetic story of mother's grief. No more intense emotion can be imagined than a mother's grief for her dead child. and this Biograph subject beautifully portrays a story of maternal bereavement. It also shows the seemingly cruel workings of fate in taking from the earth the happy, well-cared for child while leaving the poor, ragged orphan to be starved and beaten by a couple of merciless wretches, into whose hands she has fallen." --Moving Picture World, Vol. 4, No. 1 (January 2nd, 1909).
Jan 1909
Henry is being blackmailed. When the blackmailer breaks into his house, Henry apprehends him at gunpoint and takes the opportunity to rid himself of the blackmailer's threat.
Lady Florence hides her lover, a Prussian spy, from the French troops who are hunting for him. One of her other suitors, a French officer, discovers the hiding place and threatens to kill the spy.
Crime drama involving an Irish couple immigrating to America
The film is several vignettes of slap stick presentation of racial stereotypes. We are treated to murderous Mexicans, conniving Jews, brawling Irish, bloodthirsty Scots, an Indian, and even Uncle Sam. This little black and white silent feature is an interesting look, especially in that we really don't know what we are seeing. Is this what it first appears - a racist comedy that shows a disdain for all non-WASPs? Is the final scene depicting most of the cast (except the dancing Negros) working together to show that America is a melting pot?
Mar 1907
As Poe's lover is slowly dying, he struggles to make money to care for her.
Mons. Flamant, a typical roué of the French nobility, is surrounded by all the pleasures and pastimes his fabulous wealth can procure. In a quest of diversion he visits the art rooms, just as a young girl enters with a magnificent piece of sculpture and places it on sale. The roué is so impressed with the work and the girl that he purchases it at once and follows her to the atelier, where he learns that she is the maid of the sculptress, whom he sees and at once falls passionately in love with her, but when he learns that she is totally blind, his feelings change to one of deepest pity.
Nellie flees her old life and goes east to become a nurse, where she marries a doctor. One of her old colleagues finds her and tries to blackmail her. When the blackmail plot is exposed, Nellie's husband expresses his complete faith in her.
A husband finishes packing a suitcase, and then says good-bye to his wife. As soon as he is gone, the wife has her maid help her to dress for a costume ball...
Jun 1908