German actress Lena Malena starred in this lavishly budgeted and potentially intriguing melodrama about the influence of a valuable gem on its owners.
Agnes Vernon is the daughter of an old prospector whose hard luck leads him to turn holdup. The father is hanged and the girl, unknowing the real truth, becomes the ward of two young and successful miners.
Robert Darrow, a district attorney is in love with young widow, Edith Russell Dexter. Her wealthy grandfather, Judge Philip Russell, wants her to marry his business manager, Walter Elliot, who actually has been embezzling from Russell's company. During a garden party, Edith and the judge fight over her attentions to Robert
Deserted by her husband, John Madison, because he incorrectly accuses her of having an affair, Mary Madison goes to her aunt's house to have her baby, and then loses her memory in a train wreck. John, however, hears that she has died, so he takes possession of their infant daughter.
Vamp Anne Baxte marries for money but when her old suitor marries for love and is happy, she becomes insanely jealous. Determined to ruin his life, first she tempts the wife with a lounge lizard. This doesn't work, so she temps her former sweetheart by offering him her husband's business secrets. Unfortunately Ann's husband (George M. Adams) overhears the conversation and not only does he ruin the young man in the stock market, he also tosses Ann out of the house. The film ends bitterly for all concerned.
Marie Grandon may have seen more of the world than any nice girl ever would, but her motives remain pure. Marie labors in a New England oyster cannery and dreams of someday crushing the slumlords who prey upon the poor. While on a cruise, "Iron" Lloyd, a millionaire financier and tenement owner, decides to visit the town where Marie lives. Under the name Strange, he gets in a fight and is injured. While recuperating, he meets Marie and she tells him of her dream. Lloyd is intrigued by this and decides to test her. He has his lawyer transfer a huge sum of money to her and makes it look like she inherited it from a distant relative. Marie takes the money, goes to New York, and does exactly what she had planned. Her main target happens to be Lloyd. His business rival, Ogden Deneau, even aligns with her, pretending interest in her cause, but really wanting to ruin Lloyd. Marie, however, had dealings with Deneau a long time ago and plans to crush him too.
Billy Martin is sent to New York to put through a war contract for his father, a new England manufacturer, and takes $100,000 as a security. The munition broker's secretary, a crook, tells Graham, a gambling house keeper, of Billy's coming. Miller is detailed to lure him to the gambling house.
Caroline works at a hair dressing parlor. A wealthy man falls in love with her, takes her home and proposes to her. Caroline has a dream where she marries the man, who turns vicious and keeps her locked up in his mansion. He finally dies, and Caroline starts out having a good time with his money, but she sees the folly of her ways. She wakes up from the dream.
A lost silent drama film directed by Raoul Walsh and starring Renée Adorée, Carlo Liten, Harrison Hunter, Beatrice Noyes, Florence Malone, and Jean Gauthier DeTrigny. It is based on the 1919 French novel Les Plus Fort by Georges Clemenceau.
The heroine had little time for romancing newspaper reporter Walter Jameson, what with Doctor X, alias Marcus Del Mar, threatening American democracy in general and master detective Craig Kennedy's designs for a new torpedo in particular. Whenever Doctor X has Elaine or Jameson in his grasp, they are inevitably saved in the nick of time by a mystery figure garbed in black.
Vera, a woman of questionable character places a wager that she will be able to destroy a happy marriage and inveigle the husband into becoming her lover. She succeeds to the extent of a midnight tryst in the family's home, witnessed by the couple's 12-year-old daughter. Her resolve weakened by the child's piteous pleas, Vera deliberately loses the wager, freeing the sadder-but-wider husband to return to his forgiving wife.