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Browse 88 movies from Reliance Film Company
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.
May 1914
A 1914 silent Western short
William Rock, assistant cashier in a business concern, has a sick daughter. The doctor urges that she be taken immediately to another climate, and Rock, unable to get an advance on his pay, is desperate. He has been in the habit of taking the deposits to the bank every Saturday, and then going direct from the bank home. He determines that week to steal the money. On Saturday Rock is followed on the street by a couple of crooks. He goes into a telephone booth to phone his daughter May and her fiancé, a young physician, that they can start south with the younger sister at once. Taking the money out of the bank satchel, he stuffs it in his inside vest pocket and leaves with the empty bag in his hand. He goes down an alleyway to get rid of the satchel, but is assaulted by the gunmen and the bag taken from him.
Oct 1914
Shakespeare's tragedy of the Scots nobleman whose ambition leads him to betrayal, murder, and damnation.
Jun 1916
Oliver and Elizabeth wed. He is a famous lawyer, careless of his personal conduct, but has implicit faith in Elizabeth. She is a woman of strong mind, a magazine writer of repute, and believes he should guide himself by the same code that governs her. Two of their associates are profligates, Charles, an artist, and Catherine. Oliver trifles with Catherine and this so embitters Elizabeth, that she pretends to receive the attentions of Charles, although it is made clear that she has remained pure. Nevertheless, she purposely permits her husband to believe otherwise. He has considered her like Caesar's wife, but his faith is shattered. A child is born to her and the father doubts its parentage.
Apr 1915
The spoiled son of an indulgent father gives up his home and career after a quarrel and leaves home. He drifts down the path of life with vice and degradation as his companions. He meets a girl in a saloon whose life has always been in the depths and falls in love with her. This girl meets a sister of charity, who tells her of "The Light About the Throne," and urges her to reform, giving her a card and telling her to call on her at any time she needs help.
Dec 1913
The "Cannon Ball" express train is running late, so the station agent has the opportunity to play seven up with a waiting passenger who turns out to be not only his old pal but his enemy too!
Marie is a village girl, very religious. Her mother, fearing some man will make her unhappy (as she had been made by a man) made her promise on her deathbed that she would enter a nunnery. Marie considers that promise sacred and will allow nothing to interfere with her keeping that promise.
Dec 1915
Our Mutual Girl was unique. Not quite a serial, not quite a newsreel and not strictly an advertisement, it combined elements of all three. In 52 weekly one-reel episodes, running from January 19, 1914 to January 11, 1915, the Mutual Girl outwitted villains, saw the sights of New York, met with theatrical and political celebrities (who frequently helped her out of trouble) and tried on fashionable outfits in chic stores. The fashions were an early example of product placement, although apparently not paid placement.
Jan 1914
When a stack of valuable bonds go missing from the Grant household, suspicion falls on little Carmen Grant's playmate Georgie, whose father is a poor ex-convict trying to go straight.
Sep 1915
Secretly engaged to Bernice, Albert becomes infatuated with the gypsy Mina. The rich and jealous Renard is in love with Mina enticing her father to take revenge on Albert. A scuffle ensues during which Renard accidentally stabs Mina's father but allows everyone to believe Albert guilty of the crime. Bernice hears of the events and breaks off her engagement to Albert. He is pursued by the police until a last-minute confession saves him.
Jan 1916
Mollie Owens, engaged to sheriff’s deputy Dick Calvert, is taken captive by outlaw Monk Turgis and imprisoned in the "death cabin” so called because everyone shunned it after of two mysterious murders were committed there. Turgis and his friend try to scare money out of Mollie's mother, but Dick sets out on their trail. He sees one of them enter the cabin and immediately investigates.
Feb 1915
Set in Rome, during the feudal period. The heroine, the daughter of an armor manufacturer, is in love with a humble tradesman. The resistance expressed by the armorer towards this romance inexorably leads to disaster for everyone concerned.
Oct 1910
A poor widow dies, leaving her two young children, Bob and Mabel, in the care of a poor neighbor, who later is forced by circumstances to give them to an asylum. Twenty years pass and Jack, who has been adopted by a good family, has now gone into business for himself and is a rising young broker. He has been searching the detective agencies for his sister, without success, for some years. Mabel ran away from the asylum and has been brought up by a poor family, is without education and is now employed as a servant, and on a certain day is hanging clothes on a roof nearby a large office building, in which Bob has his office, and a small boy is flying his kite from the same rooftop.
Dec 1914
Wealthy and charitable-minded manufacturer Mr. Merwin fearing his death, decides to donate a large sum of money to the church to atone for his past lack of charity.
Mar 1915
Jean, a clam digger finds a treasure map. He races against his girl Marie's father and his rival to find the treasure, ultimately rescuing the girl and securing the gold.
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.
Feb 1914
Wealthy, bored socialite named Mary Lang disguises herself and runs away to seek adventure, but is recognized by reporter Hugh Grey, who tricks her into falling in love with him. On the eve of their planned wedding, she discovers he is a fortune hunter who stole her photograph and manipulated her for the reward money. After she denounces him, Grey locks her in her room, collects the reward from her father, and is thrashed by John Barrick, Mary's father's business partner, for his treachery. Her eyes are opened to Barrick's sincerity, and she ultimately marries him.
Ben Wilson takes a vacation to his father's farm and is reunited with his childhood sweetheart, Rose Meadows. The prospects for an early marriage are bright until a family feud separates the lovers and Ben returns to the city to seek solace in wild behavior. One night he visits a roadhouse where Rose has been lured by Carrol Walker, a playboy of the worst kind.
Nov 1914