Footlights and Shadows

Back to Liberty

November 1927 •

Tom Devon, alias Reginald Briand, is the mastermind behind an organization of gentlemen thieves, including Jimmy Stevens and Rudolph Gambier. Jimmy falls in love with Tom's innocent daughter, Gloria, after he rescues her from an embarrassing scene in a restaurant. Tom disapproves of the romance and decides to dissolve the partnership. When an embittered Rudolph kills Tom he frames Jimmy, but Gloria is determined to clear him. Posing as a thief, she seeks the truth.

The Social Leper

March 1917 •English

A clairvoyant warns divorcée Adrienne Van Couver to beware of Robert Warren, whom she has spurned. The warning comes true after Adrienne's ex-husband, John Dean, meets Warren, an old friend, and tells him the story of his marriage to Adrienne. He tells how her frivolity and malice caused both the death of their only child, and after their divorce John’s romance with Lorraine Barkley who left him for lawyer Henry Armstrong. Enraged by Adrienne's treachery, Warren goes to her apartment and kills her. Dean arrives after Warren has fled and is arrested for the murder. Believing that Dean is innocent, Lorraine persuades Armstrong to defend him. After a last-minute confession by John is cleared.

The Barricade

March 1917 •English

Debutante Hope Merrill returns home one day to find her financier father Amos Merrill on the verge of committing suicide. Rather than reveal the truth -- that he has misappropriated funds from his own company -- Merrill claims that he has been ruined by young John Cook, Hope's sweetheart.

Little Women

November 1918 •English

Four sisters come of age in America in the aftermath of the Civil War.

Love's Toll

May 1916 •English

Leaving her small town home and coming to New York to study voice, Marian Lane soon falls in love with Allen Crauben.

Namenlose Helden

January 1925 •German

A family suffers greatly during the First World War.

The Gypsy Trail

November 1915 •English

Gypsy Willie Buckland recalls to his friend why he and his wife return each year to that same spot to hear the chimes in the village church. In his youth he and little gypsy maid Jane were friends and sweethearts. When Willie’s father died, he went to the city where he met "The Painted Woman," spending his last cent on her, but they had genuinely fallen in love and he promises to stay with the woman, who is fatally ill, until she dies. Penniless and ill, he wanders out into the street and thence to the meadows, where he is found by Jane and nursed back to health. Fearing his love may not be true, she tells him that if he finds her wherever she may wander, one year from that date, that she will believe him and marry him. A long weary year passes when he arrives in that very village just as the chimes are ringing, and there he finds Jane. His story finished, Buckland points to Jane and their children with a happy smile.

The Making of O'Malley

June 1925 •English

A policeman falls for a teacher, and befriends her students. A gang of bootleggers threatens his newfound joys.

The Forward Pass

November 1929 •English

Marty Reid, the star quarterback at Sanford College, is constantly singled out by the opposition for punishment, and he swears to his pal, Honey Smith, and to Coach Wilson that he will quit the game forever. Ed Kirby, who dislikes Reid, calls him yellow, and Wilson gets Patricia Carlyle, the college vamp, to induce Reid to play. At a sorority dance, where only football players can cut in, Kirby persecutes Reid by dancing with Pat, and as a result Reid does apply to play in the game.

The Spirit of the Poppy

November 1914 •English

A psychological study of the effects of drug addiction on humanity. Helene Ford has been injected with heroin by an unscrupulous physician, causing her to act irrationally. Her husband Stephen, a noted artist, hires a model whom Helene, inflamed by their friend Jack Murray, suspects of having an affair with Stephen. The model is also addicted to drugs and convinces Stephen to try heroin to forget his troubles. Both Stephen and Helene then become addicted to drugs. They abandon their home and then separate, after which Stephen resorts to crime to support his heroin addiction. During an escape from the police after a robbery, Stephen encounters Helene again, this time near death. She sacrifices her own life to shield her husband, but Stephen and his former model plunge to their deaths.

Rose-Marie

February 1928 •English

Sergeant Malone of the Mounties and effeminate Etienne Doray are both in love with Rose-Marie, but she doesn't light up until soldier of fortune Jim Kenyon drifts into the post. Soon Jim is accused of murder but he escapes.

Great Expectations

January 1917 •English

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.

The Queen's Husband

January 1946 •English

The hapless king of a small European nation must put up with a domineering queen, a daughter who wants to elope with her boyfriend, a peasant revolt and a scheming son who wants to be king himself and is plotting to take advantage of the situation.

In the Hands of Merciless Fate

December 1914 •Russian

The Big Fight

May 1930 •English

Based on the David Belasco stage production of the Max Marcin play in which heavyweight-champion Jack Dempsey played the role of the fighter, Tiger: This "behind-the-scenes look of a heavyweight-championship fight" looks much like all of the other boxing films in which the Champ gets involved in a frame-up and is asked to take a dive.

Young Wife SM Confinement

January 1991 •Japanese

Pinku distributed by Xces / Nikkatsu.

A Nine O'Clock Town

July 1918 •English

David Clary runs a sleepy little dry-goods store in a sleepy little town. A vamp from the big city shows up, intent on taking Clary for everything he's worth by a combination of seduction and blackmail. But the day is saved by the ingenuity of David's corset model.

The Wager

November 1916 •English

A $5,000 wager is made between two prominent jewelers, Mr. Thorpe and Mr. Chandler, as to whether their most valuable jewels can be stolen. Thorpe, seeking to stack the odds in his favor, asks Police Commissioner James Stone, a business crony, to enlist the help of Diamond Daisy, a jewel thief who is trying to go straight. Posing as a rich heiress, she asks Mr. Thorpe to accompany her to show her father an expensive item of jewelry. Instead, Mr. Thorpe is detained in an insane asylum by a doctor who has been led to believe that Thorpe is Daisy's insane husband. Daisy absconds with the jewels, but a vindictive detective, who has been following Daisy, thinks the heist is for real and tries to arrest her. Eventually the commissioner intervenes and all ends well.

The Wheel of the Law

September 1916 •English

Broadway star Mona Mainard retires from the stage for marriage to rising attorney John Norton and watches his career climb. Over time she becomes concerned with his at times unscrupulous ways of getting convictions. When her brother is accused of murder Norton refuses to give up the case despite being aware of his innocence because a victory could land him the governorship. Mona takes extreme steps to bring him to his senses and exonerate her brother.

The Road to London

November 1921 •English

An American millionaire visiting London falls in love with a young aristocrat and elopes with her, pursued by a rival suitor.