James Cruze

A broker who was trying to get rich dishonestly, found himself in danger of arrest. Just as he was preparing for flight a neighbor entered. This man had been poor all his life, but coming unexpectedly into a legacy of $10,000, decided that the broker was the man who could invest the money for him.

A rich man who finds that there is nothing in life worth living for, is worse off than is a poor man in similar circumstances, for the poor man may he stricken with ambition, and in a last effort to attain fame and fortune, redeems himself. But what is a man to do if he has wealth, health, all the fame he desires, and yet looks at life through blue spectacles?

Comte Paul De Valreas is attracted to Frou Frou, the frivolous wife of Henri De Sartorys and the indifferent mother of their young son Georges. Paul persuades Frou Frou to bring her somber sister Louise, who secretly loves Henri, into the household, thus freeing her from any domestic duties.

While visiting Alan, who works in Tokyo, she attends a festival with her Japanese maid while wearing a Japanese kimono. There she meets the wealthy Arai Takada, who is taken by the mysterious woman. Alan has dishonored and betrayed O'Mitsu, and her brother Arai plans a terrible revenge.

Dr. Henry Jekyll experiments with scientific means of revealing the hidden, dark side of man and releases a murderer from within himself.

This twenty-three episode serial told the story of a secret society called The Black Hundred and its attempts to gain control of a lost million dollars.

In the days long ago when knights were brave and venturesome, enchanted forests grew and mythical creatures lived among us.

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.

Chinese merchant Wing Lung and Elizabeth Mendall, an American, marry and have a son named Jang Lung. Because Elizabeth wants Jang Lung to be raised as a Christian, Wing Lung locks her in the cellar and she becomes insane. Jang meets Marcell Matthews at an Eastern university, and she returns with him to San Francisco to be married.

According to the tale found in the ancient annals, the little town of Hamelin, in Hanover, found itself, five hundred years ago overrun with rats. The citizens tried every way to abate the plague, but without result. Finally a mysterious stranger appeared in the town and offered for the sum of 1000 guilders to clear the place of vermin.

Two young people marry in a Continental village and receive the congratulations of all save the rejected suitor. He bides his time while the couple live happily and are blessed twice with children. War is declared after the husband has suffered an injury for life and the rejected suitor enlists.

George MacFarland, a wealthy young man who loves adventure, bets his friends Thornton Brown and Arthur Sole $20,000 that he can commit a crime and elude the police for a year. After he forges a check, George heads West and does escape arrest for nearly a year, despite the proliferation of police circulars bearing his name and his favorite expression, "Believe me, Xantippe." In a Colorado hunting lodge, he meets Sheriff Kamman's pretty daughter Dolly, who recognizes and tries to arrest him. According to the terms of the bet, however, he must be captured by a genuine officer of the law, which Dolly is not.

He was a hard-headed old business man and very mercenary, so when he received a letter from a debtor in a little country town asking for more time in which to pay the amount he owed, he decided to show no mercy. But on the way to the home of his debtors he had an accident. He slipped and fell from a cliff upon a projecting ledge below. He was thinking less of the money than of the chances of prolonging his life when he heard someone call him, and looking up he saw a girl standing on the cliff.

Lord Trevor and his ward, Nan Tremain are prominent figures in London society, as well as clandestine agents of the government. With the help of wealthy East Indian, Abdul, who posed as Trevor’s body servant, Nan dressed as a foreign noblewoman, recovers the plans of certain coast fortifications which had fallen into the hands of double agent, Col. Pfaff and would have been of irredeemable loss to her country had they reached another country.

The course of true love was running very smoothly until the girl became interested in the cause of votes for women. Her fiancé did not approve of it. There was a quarrel, and the engagement ring was haughtily returned. The young woman not only stubbornly refused to make up, but decided to become a really truly militant suffragette.

Zudora, not knowing she's an heiress to a $20 million fortune, lives with her uncle, a mystic and detective, who covets her inheritance. She wants to marry John Storm but her uncle is against it. However, the uncle makes a bargain; if Zudora can solve the next twenty mysteries brought to him, she can marry as she chooses. Episodes 1,2 and 8, plus another unidentified chapter, survive. The rest is believed to be lost.

Thanhouser Company three-reel silent film based on Charles Dickens’s story of an English lad's tribulation-filled journey to adulthood, Thanhouser released the three films over the course of three weeks beginning on October 17, 1911, one 1,000 foot reel per week.

Willie West, a small boy, is very fond of his pet rabbit. He is unhappy because Hank (the rabbit) seems to be losing his former good health. When Willie tries to obtain assistance from his family, he quickly discovers that he has chosen the wrong time, for his father is feeling bad himself, and has no sympathy to waste on rabbits. A doctor is also hard-hearted. Willie is sent to the drug store to fill a prescription for his father, and he decided to see if the medicine will not cure the rabbit. To hide his wrongdoing from his parents, Willie fills the bottle with water. In the meantime the druggist has discovered that he has made an awful mistake, and put poison in the dose.

The girl's father is Gunga Ras, a Hindu student of the occult. The girl's uncle is found dead and the lover blamed, but she personally investigates the crime. The father is suspected, but it develops that the death was really caused by use of liquid air in the hands of another

The young artist had searched Paris for a suitable model to pose as a shepherdess in a new picture which he hoped would win him fame. But none of the models pleased him, and at last, feeling that he could not do justice to the picture, he decided to postpone his work and take a walking trip through France.

A foundling is raised in a convent and becomes a nun there, until she falls in love with a wounded soldier under her care. When she leaves the convent, a statue of the Virgin Mary comes to life and assumes the girl's appearance to carry on her work.

A nervous, fault-finding invalid decides that his health requires that he shall live in the South, and manages to exchange his place "Up North," for a shack and an orange grove in Florida.

The banker's motto was "Everyone for himself, and me first." The girl believed in aiding the poor, and that wealth carried with it an obligation to be useful. The father admired his beautiful daughter, even though he did not understand her. She loved him and hoped some day to bring him to a realization of his duty toward the helpless and friendless. Before this happened, the clash came.

A recreation of the Thanhouser Studio fire of 13 January 1913, it includes the rescue of a small child from the flaming building.

The story concerns the love of Henry Little for Grace Carden and its reciprocal sentiment, with the time-honored interference of those who attempt to arrange the affairs of Cupid to suit social exigencies.

If you were a studious man, accustomed to burning the midnight oil, wouldn't it annoy you if each night at 12 precisely, the ghost of a melancholy maiden appeared, weeping and lamenting? A certain professor was bothered this way. He was not afraid of ghosts and could have endured one whose specialty was silent haunting. He found, however, that the weeping maiden was a nuisance, and prevented him from concentrating. So he decided, ungallant though his conduct might be deemed, to get rid of her.

During the French and Indian War, Col. Munro’s daughters journeying to Fort William Henry are betrayed by guide Magua. Hawkeye and Mohicans rescue them, but Hurons capture Cora. Uncas dies saving her; Hawkeye avenges him, symbolizing the Mohicans’ demise.

The wealthy old bachelor returned to his home after a visit to his club, and found waiting him news that his time on earth was pitifully brief. He had money to pay for the best of medical attention, but doctors could not save him. For the first time it struck the old millionaire that no man or woman would care whether he lived or died. Essentially selfish, he had never made friends.

A dapper sergeant in the army won the love of a pretty young stenographer, and they had planned that as soon as his term of enlistment was up he would enter private life and marry her. The girl was employed by a firm who had offices in one of the tallest of New York's skyscrapers, and her sweetheart saw her there. She took him to her favorite observatory, the roof of the building, where he obtained a magnificent and uninterrupted view of the greatest city in the world. He, on his part, took his sweetheart to the army maneuvers, where she witnessed with delight the well drilled troops, but would not confess that there was one man among them who could not compare with the one of her choice. She was particularly interested in the signal corps, however, and at odd times the sergeant instructed her in the code until she had become fairly proficient in it.

Nello was a little boy who lived with his aged grandfather near Antwerp. They were very poor, but because they loved each other so much were happier than many persons who enjoyed luxury. The child's only friend, outside of her grandfather, was an animal, who has gone down in history as "A Dog of Flanders."

While Bill Burnham is jailed for drunkenly shooting up the town, he receives a letter saying that his father has died, his sister Janet is about to marry a worthless count, and the family fortune is in danger. Unable to leave, he convinces his friend, Johnny Wiggins, a motion picture cowboy, to go to his home in Palm Beach, which Bill left as a boy, and impersonate him.

An indictment of the evils of child labor, the film was controversial in its time for its use of actual footage of children employed in a working mill.

The son of a poor widow fell in love with a heartless showgirl who spurned the simple gifts he gave her. In a moment of desperation he tried to rob the box office of the theater in which he was employed as a stage hand, but was detected by the night watchman who shot and wounded him mortally. Before he expired he wrote a letter to his mother saying, "Many a man is tempted to sin for the woman he loves." The widow in order to maintain herself, obtained work as a scrub woman in an office building where she became acquainted with a prepossessing young clerk who wife she learned was dangerously ill and was told by the physician to go to Arizona.

A truncated version of Wilkie Collins' popular mystery story.

A well to do young man imagined he was very much in love with a certain actress.

The rich little boy was seven years old and his kind Mama gave him a birthday party. A number of children were invited to wish him happy returns of the day, and it promised to be a wonderful event in the child's life. There was one unpleasant feature, however, the host's cousin, who was a boy of twelve, therefore almost venerable, was a guest, and the prettiest little girl of the party soon became this old man's darling. As the rich little boy had favored her with his attention it angered him to find that he had a rival in his elderly relative.

John Wheeler (Warren Cook) gets himself in some financial hot water and needs to prove that he is half owner of some land in Canada. But the only person with a copy of the deed is Jean Corteau (Edwin Carewe, who also directed), and Corteau has gone up to the property and decided to claim all of it for himself.

A young mechanic, temporarily residing in a southern city, found that business was slack in his trade, and decided to send his wife to her relations in the north until happier days dawned. He did not dream that he was putting her in peril, and when later he received word that the ship upon which she sailed had been lost with all on board, he was frantic with grief and self-reproach. Life in this city became hateful to him, and having no ties that bound him there, he abruptly departed into the country, deciding to wander wherever fate might lead him.

Family drama of a brother and sister who take to the stage.

Vincent, the lazy son of a wealthy father, travels to the country in an attempt to clean up his act. There he meets Kitty Trent, and he offers to marry her. His intention is to hold a fake ceremony, but Kitty's childhood sweetheart, Tom Wilson, finds out about this scheme and threatens Vincent at gunpoint to make the wedding a real one. Vincent does, but afterwards goes on seeing other women, neglecting his wife and, later, baby.

Lewis Vickers accidentally kills a man and goes to Central America. Here he meets Robert Lee, who bears a remarkable resemblance to him. Lee is a worthless young chap whose father is anxious to have him return to the United States. On his death bed Lee turns his papers over to Vickers and begs him to assume his name. Arriving in New York, Vickers goes to the Lee home as Robert Lee, and discovers that the dead man has willed him a badly blotted past that includes a wife and two children and a large collection of debts. He also finds a beautiful adopted daughter in the Lee household and promptly falls in love with her. The only way he can stand any chance of winning the girl is by telling the truth about himself.

In this adventure the diplomatic free-lance and his brilliant aid in war, Nan Tremain, are again pitted against their relentless enemy, Pfaff.

A young man of social standing chooses instead to live as a hobo. He gets work in a lumber camp, and there uncovers intrigue by German agents.

Rustler Pete Sontag kidnaps Merlin Warner after he kills her father. Pete, a drug smuggler who uses his saloon as a front, coerces Merlin though beatings to become the dancer Mexicali Mae. She meets and falls in love with morphine addict Joe Blanchard but Pete frames Joe for a murder that he committed, forcing Mae to hide Joe in a homestead in the hills. After many struggles, Joe is cured of his addiction and proposes to Mae. She accepts, but when his mother and fiancée Eleanor arrive, they offer her money to leave, Mae refuses the money but becomes convinced that she is not good enough for Joe and writes to him that she is returning to the saloon. Joe learning of his mother’s plot arrives at the saloon and in the resultant fight Pete is killed. Mae and Joe are reconciled.

No synopsis available yet.

The beautiful young princess was weary of the formality and ceremony that encompassed her. She had read many books and from them had gained the idea that she would be far happier as a simple peasant than as the daughter of a king. Even when it came to her marriage, she sadly reflected, there was no romance, for her father had arbitrarily contracted an alliance for her with a neighboring prince. The princess was taking her drive one day and was sadder than ever. She saw a wedding procession issue from a neighboring cottage, and pityingly watched the mother of the bride, as she turned into her lonely house. In a field the princess noticed a young farmer, and she thought that the romance which had been denied her might come into her life. By the time she had returned to the castle she was pitying herself exceedingly, and had decided to be a caged bird no longer.

Henry de Spain is determined to find the man who murdered his father. He becomes sort of an outsider with Duke Morgan's gang, cattlemen, and outlaws. Nan, daughter of the head of the clan, secretly loves Henry and when he is wounded in a fight with the Morgan clan, she helps him escape. This angers her father and he declares that she shall marry her cousin. Nan dispatches a message to Henry for assistance and he brings her safely to his clan. Nan then learns that her father was the murder of Henry's father. She returns to her father to learn the truth and together they go to Henry and reveal the murder's name. After a thorough understanding and forgiving, Henry and Nan are married.

Outside the door of the home of a sculptor and his mother, fell a poor, friendless young girl. They took the girl in and cared for her, and as time went on the mother began to regard her as her daughter. The son regarded the affectionate advances of the girl with only brotherly love. But there came a time when the misgivings of the son changed, for he began to pay scant attentions to a young beauty he met at a reception and who was characterized as a woman with a heart "cold as marble." This piqued the beauty, who was accustomed to abject adulation. She determined to bring him to her feet and in this she succeeded. She offered to pose for him, and, spurred on by such a splendid model and her praises, he produced a figure which was acclaimed by all the critics as a masterpiece.

Shows brief glimpses into the lives of movie stars of the time. Included is shots of Elsie Janis in her garden in Tarrytown, where she gives an impersonation of Mary Pickford. The film also shows the parts of the marriage ceremony between James Cruze and Marquerite Snow on January 28, 1913. The film claims this to be the first marriage to be captured on film. The film then moves on to some shots of Louise Glaum and her mother. This in turn is followed with a behind the scenes filming of a stunt involving a bathtub. The film then ends with some shots of Clara Kimball Young, Teddy (Mack Sennett's dog) and finally Marie Prevost.

A romantic young girl, visiting St. Augustine, finds that she must make the choice which means happiness or misery for life. She has two suitors, one an everyday young American who has made his way in the world and is proud of it. He has money, will have more, and in every way would seem desirable. But the other man had ancestors!

Forester and Maywood, two wealthy neighbor planters, volunteered their services to defend their country when the war of the Revolution broke out. Forester was made colonel of his regiment, while Maywood became a captain. The men mortgaged their plantations and gave the benefits to the government, which was hard pressed for funds. Colonel Forester was mortally wounded at the battle of Cowpens, but before he passed away, Captain Maywood promised that he would care for Forester's motherless little girl.

Dramatic three-reel film based on Wagner's opera of chivalry and spiritual struggle. Wandering minstrel Tannhauser wins the heart of Elizabeth, niece of the powerful Landgrave. Later, under the spell of Venus and her nymphs, Tannhauser passes into Venusberg, a netherworld of earthly pleasures. Returning to the Landgrave's court, he praises Venus in song and sparks the righteous anger of all present. His own prayers and those of Elizabeth free him from enchantment and he takes up the habit of a monk, devoting himself to God. He sets off to seek absolution in Rome while Elizabeth waits at court, ever weakening in his absence.

A girl, beautiful but heartless and ambitious, was the daughter of a poor miner and was devotedly loved by a man in her own station of life. She accepted his attentions willingly until a young engineer came along and paid court to her. She then dismissed her first suitor. Her father made a lucky strike, and they moved to the city to enjoy their wealth. This sealed the fate of the second suitor for a rich man became smitten with the girl and she accepted his advances. Perhaps she would have married him in time had it not been that she aroused the enmity of an old witch, deeply skilled in magic.

Immigrants drama where a poor Italian girl almost falls into the hands of white slave traders when she goes to New York.

A short adaption of the novel by Charles Dickens.

Film realization of the Biblical story of Joseph, played here by future director James Cruze.

Based on the novel of the same name by Mrs. Henry Wood (Ellen Wood).

: Count Eberhard von Alderstein was one of the robber barons who flourished in Europe during the Middle Ages. He was cruel and lawless, plundered the merchants who passed his castle, and cared for no one, except his little sister, Ermyntrude.

Hawaiian prince Tom Garvin (Sessue Hayakawa) receives an American college education and falls in love with Enid Benton (Florence Vidor).

With her week's wash only half done, Diana drops her work to peruse the Paris fashion magazines. Poring over the beautiful fashions delineated in the highly colored pages of the publications, Diana falls asleep. She dreams that she is wealthy and a society leader in Washington. A short film (273 meters) which marked James Cruze's debut as director.