Charles Hill Mailes

James Houghland, inventor of a new method by which television signals can be instantaneously sent anywhere in the world, refuses to sell the process to television companies, who then send agents to acquire the invention any way they can. (imdb)

Drunken red Indians carouse in pagan revelry, whipping up their appetite for dog meat. In search of supper, a party of Indians attempts to kidnap the pets of some nearby pioneers. The settlers shoot the Indians which instigates a war. Will the isolated town of settlers survive the onslaught of the savages long enough for the cavalry to arrive? (imdb)

A father, anxious for his son's financial well being, develops a special soda pop called Dopokoke which is laced with cocaine. Dopokoke is advertised as relief "for that tired feeling." The drink is a success, but the son becomes addicted to it, much to his father's regret. Loosely based on the allegations that the Coca-Cola company and other soft drink manufacturers laced their soda with dope. (imdb)

In old Spanish California, the oppressive colonial government is opposed by Zorro, masked champion of the people, who appears out of nowhere with flashing sword and an athletic sense of humor, scarring the faces of evildoers with his Mark. Meanwhile, beautiful Lolita is courted by villainous Captain Ramon, rich but effete Don Diego... and dashing Zorro, who is never seen at the same time as Don Diego. As Zorro continues to evade pursuit, Ramon puts the damsel in distress... (imdb)

A lonely young woman lives with her strict father who forbids her to wear make-up. One day at an ice cream social, she meets a young man you seems interested in her. However, unknown to her, he is a burglar who is only interested in breaking into her father's house. One night she is awakened by a noise. Grabbing a pistol, she enters her father's downstairs office where she confronts a masked intruder . . . (imdb)

Union soldiers march off to battle amid cheering crowds. After the battle turns against the Union Army, one soldier runs away, hiding in his girlfriend's house. Ashamed of his cowardice, he finds his courage and crosses enemy lines to bring help to his trapped comrades. (imdb)

The orphan Dora is courted by two different gold miners. (imdb)

Thieves follow a doctor as he takes home a large sum of money. Later, when they break into his house, the doctor's wife and daughter are trapped. One of the thieves has jilted his sweetheart, who tells the doctor of the robbery, and helps him save his family. (imdb)

A criminal designs a plan to get revenge on the district attorney who convicted his brother. (imdb)

John and Mary divorce their spouses to marry each other. Mary dies after giving birth and the baby is taken in by John's first wife, Martha. She refuses all contact with John until many years later when he becomes ill and she finally forgives him for deserting her. (imdb)

An aristocrat is delighted when a nobleman asks for his sister's hand in marriage. But delight turns to shock when he discovers that the engaged couple are already lovers. He kills the nobleman in a duel, watches his sister die of grief, and then poisons himself. (imdb)

A young woman who works mending fishermen's nets is engaged to be married. But her fiancé has an old love who refuses to let him go. Further, his former girlfriend has a brother who is willing to use violence to protect his sister's honor. (imdb)

A rich man's daughter marries against his will, and is disinherited. A manipulative attorney contrives to keep the rich man poisoned against his daughter in order to make himself heir. (imdb)

A young woman's peaceful existence is shattered when she is abducted by the crew of a boat of smugglers, who then also turn against their captain. (imdb)

As Jim, a well-known loafer, is drinking in a saloon, he provokes a confrontation with a prospector who has just come in. The prospector humiliates Jim, who then swears to get even with him. Meanwhile, three malicious drunks have just killed an Indian, solely to amuse themselves. When Jim abducts the prospector's wife, and takes her to a remote place, he soon afterwards encounters a party of angry braves seeking revenge. (imdb)

A man tells his grandchildren about prehistoric man. Weakhands is unable to court a woman because of his physical weakness. Humiliated by Bruteforce, he bumps into Lillywhite, who has also been cowering since her mother died. But when they venture out in search of breakfast, Bruteforce separates the couple and sends Weakhands scrambling into a cave. There, he hits upon the design for a club: A rock on the end of a stick. (imdb)

Two men are released from prison after having served their sentences. One is determined to go straight and stay out of trouble, but his fellow ex-con has other ideas, and his plans wind up spelling trouble for both of them. (imdb)

When Mrs. Harding dies, she leaves a mysterious letter to her pastor. The note tells how her cold, miserly husband worked her to death. She asks the pastor to administer a small trust which she has bequeathed her daughter so that the girl might enjoy some finery which her father has always denied her. The village milliner carries the latest hat styles from New York, one of which has caught the girl's fancy. The pastor, loyal to the dying mother's wishes, buys the young lady the hat. (imdb)

Just before she dies, an elderly married woman stashes the horde of money she's secretly accumulated beneath the false bottom of an old shipping trunk. After her death, her husband, believing himself penniless, has to leave their old home and move in with his son's family, where he's treated with no respect or consideration. Also on the scene is a newly-hired kindly young housekeeper (Mary Pickford); she and the old gentleman become close friends and eventually run away together. (imdb)

A potentially violent patient in an insane asylum is calmed when he hears a nurse playing the piano. But shortly afterwards he breaks free, eludes his pursuers, and acquires a gun. He soon comes to a house where a young wife is home alone, and there is a tense confrontation. (imdb)

Princess Emmanuella agrees to marry the Duke of a neighboring kingdom in order to keep the peace between their two countries. However, when the duke's handsome brother arrives to escort her to her new husband, she finds herself attracted to him, and even more so when she discovers that her future husband, whom she has never met, is ugly, brutish and deformed. (imdb)

An ex-reformatory girl seeks a new life with the help of a fatherly judge and an earnest young minister. Trouble ensues when a criminal gang catch up with her.

Poor, decent young woman Lory (Percy) avoids moral pratfalls after she is employed by a rich family. She falls in love with the son (Harlan) but the couple is separated by his cruel, class-conscious mother. Lory stays true to her spirit and does not compromise her integrity when the mother attempts to pay her off. Later, a tragedy might open the door the broken hearted young woman to find happiness.

Mary falls for an artist, but he hides his fiancee from her. When she finds out about his fiancee tragedy ensues.

The border bandit Severn is after Estrada's money. He not only gets Estrada to promise his daughter to him in marriage but he also convinces him that Dave Marshall is the bandit. When Dave shows up to expose Severn, he is jailed. (imdb)

The prospector had taught the Indian boy the doctrine of peace. When his tribe resisted the attack of another tribe the boy did not take part. The din of the battle, as the horsemen circled them again and again, the moans of men caught under falling horses struck terror in the boy's heart The incensed warriors cast him from the tribe with the brand of a coward. It was then that his opportunity came to follow the white man's wonderful doctrine. "Big love man lay down life for friend," (imdb)

This story is somewhat in the nature of a poetical fantasy, and may be construed as the spectator pleases. It is the story of a wanderer who prefers to seek, through his flute, the spirit of truth, that he may give it out into the world as he passes through his various journeys and experiences in life and thus make earth a better and fairer place. He prefers this to the perpetual strife for gain. (imdb)

D.W. Griffith short intercuts two different stories before mixing them together at the end. The film focuses on a telephone girl (Mae Marsh) who leaves work for her lunch break at the same time as "The Lady" (Claire McDowell) goes to a jewelry store to pick up some priceless jewels. When the telephone girl returns to work she gets a phone call from the house of "The Lady" as a robbery (Harry Carey) has broken in and is trying to steal the jewels. (imdb)

Joseph Graybill, learning that his friends have been making a lot of money in the stock market, takes a flyer himself. However, when a drop in the shares he has bought wipes him out, he breaks into his employer's safe for money to pay for a margin call. Will the thought of his grey-haired mother and the importunities of his co-worker Mabel Normand stop him or will he descend to a life of crime? (imdb)

D.W. Griffith's Biograph short The Schoolteacher and the Waif (1912) can be seen as foundational in terms of this storyline. Nora, the waif, played by Mary Pickford, is forced to attend school--she is actually dragged through the dirt kicking and screaming--by local officials. She warms to her teacher for the way that he defends her against the taunts of some other students, but subsequently rejects him when she has to wear a dunce cap during a spelling bee.

A weird letter tells our heroes to go to a ghost town which has an abandoned mine. There they contend with bad guys looking for hidden gold. They are aided by a mysterious Phantom.

A short film directed by Wilfred Lucas for the Biograph Company.

Liberty Belles, silent comedy film from 1914 starring Dorothy Gish, Jack Pickford, and Gertrude Bambrick.

An American fighting ship battles Barbary pirates in the Mediterranean in the 18th century. (imdb)

A lighthouse keeper and his daughter are in trouble on two fronts--if the authorities find out he is going blind they will remove him, and a gang of liquor-smugglers is trying to destroy the lighthouse so they can land their illegal cargo on shore without being spotted. (imdb)

Iola, the little Indian girl, is held captive by a gang of cutthroats, from whose clutches and abuse she is rescued by Jack Harper, a prospector. She is truly grateful to Jack, for she regards him as something different from the white people she has seen. Jack's sweetheart and her father are parties of a wagon-train headed for this place, and as luck has been against him, he is somewhat gloomy. Iola learns the reason, and promises to help him find gold.

A lonely widower living in the Italian quarter of the city, whose only solace since the death of his wife is his little child, is reluctantly a member of a secret society existent among his countrymen. The active members of this society have observed with envy the success of another Italian and feel that they should share the proceeds of his industry without working for it, so to this end send the wealthy man a demand for $5,000, ostensibly to defray the expenses of their society.

As water seeks its level, so affinities will find their own, no matter what the conditions. The quartet comprising this story are of ages as the months are to each other. June, a young college boy, finds his resources in depletion, and to improve his financial condition, proposes to October, a wealthy spinster of the "where-is-he" stage, and is accepted with avidity, and so these two soul "mis"-mates start their engagement inning.

Young gypsy girl Mary, is seduced by the immoral Robert Crane and abandoned. She is exiled from the gypsies and, along with her mother Zenda, known as "The Woman in Black," she vows revenge. Meanwhile, Crane blackmails Stella Everett's father into forcing her to marry him, even though she loves Frank Mansfield, Crane's rival for a congressional seat. Frank wins, but Stella still faces the prospect of marriage to Crane until Zenda comes to her with a plan.

The two brothers and the little adopted daughter of the household grew up from childhood together. The girl and the younger brother were childhood sweethearts, he being so different in nature from his elder brother, who was considered the bad man and dead shot of the hills. The younger brother has been living in the valley for a long time and returns to his home at the time the story opens.

Dick Logan, a young writer in search of local color, stops at a little border town in the Southwest and engages lodging at the Mexican Inn. Two tramps see the amount of money he has and plan to secure it. In the town he befriends a Mexican girl by stopping her uncle from beating her for having broken a water jar. That night, to while the time, he plays faro and breaks the bank, which greatly augments his already large amount of money.

Sim Sloane and his beloved son were the reprobates of the village, not what would be called lovers of peace and kindness. But granddad dwelt in a house filled more with love, and when Sim came in for his brutal sport, he soon went out assisted by granddad. Incited by ridicule and drink, Sim swore to get even. That was where granddad's new supply of powder came in. Sim appropriated it and although he wrecked the house of love, he destroyed through his venom the only thing he cherished in life.

Behold in this film the Uplifter, a peculiarity of the human species, quite convinced that all that is, is wrong. Forth to the uplift he minds everybody's business but his own, until that business is as clean, pure and spotless as himself. Verily in these later days is there no school of art named, "Minding One's Business."

A chorus girl falls for a young man pretending to be his boss, a millionaire. WHen his boss returns from a European trip and finds that the woman he loves is engaged to his secretary, complications ensue.

Lure of the Circus is a 1918 American adventure film serial directed by J. P. McGowan.