Known for Acting
A nostalgic look at film clips from the Silent era.
A little girl and her father are among the settlers in a small western town. The father is very friendly with the neighboring Indian tribe and is presented with a quaint piece of metal representing a dragon's claw, the tribe's good luck omen. Some time later, while traveling with his daughter, he is held up by a band of bandits and shot dead. A bandit takes from him this dragon's claw. Years pass. The little girl has grown into a beautiful young lady. She marries. Their love is very real and their life most happy. He decides to go out west to see a mine that yields the richest gold and his wife expresses a desire to go along with him. The mine is christened "The Dragon's Claw," because of an Indian charm the man owns. While out on a western desert, he shows the dragon's claw to his wife. She then recognizes it as the kind her father possessed when he was killed. She has understood it to be the only one of its kind. She now believes it is her husband who killed her father.
The husband of the young woman is shot by a rejected suitor and she is left with an infant boy, who is to be spared until he reaches man's estate. Standing over the dead body of her husband she vows vengeance.
John Evans and Thomas Barnes were both employed by the banking house of H.M. Cruze and Co. They also occupied an apartment together. Barnes received a tip to play C. and S. stock for a rise. But instead of rising it fell, and he was notified by his broker to send five hundred dollars the next morning to cover the margin or be wiped out. He had no money of his own left, and waiting until everyone had left the office, Barnes opened the safe and took out five hundred dollars.
A young girl is a talented violinist, and wins a scholarship in a school of music. In the village is a banker who is a deacon of a church of whom everybody is afraid. He convinces the father of the girl that music is leading her astray, and declares that the only way to save her is to make her his wife. The father falls dead at the wedding. A year later a child is born. The young wife leads a life of sorrow and abuse. The husband takes her violin away from her and refuses her girl friends permission to come and see her. When she rebels, he drives her out of the house. She goes to the city and makes a name for herself as a musician. Her husband, chagrined at her success, tries to worry her. He sends a box of crepe intimating that their baby is dead.
A girl marries a wealthy pawnbroker in order to get money for her poor lover, who is an artist. When the pawnbroker dies, his son forces the girl to marry him, but he is killed and she marries the artist. Various problems arise after their marriage, but eventually they are happy together.
Beatrice, an artist in the city, goes to a fishing village to find inspiration for her paintings. She meets a young fisherman and, to ensure he continues posing for her, leads him to believe she is falling in love with him. He becomes devoted to her, leaving his heartbroken sweetheart in the village. As the painting nears completion, Beatrice invites the fisherman to accompany her to the city. In the city, the fisherman realizes she has a fiancé and that she was merely using him for her art.
The story opens with Miss Leonard, now a woman past the prime of life, relating the sad, romantic story of her life to her dearest niece, who is engaged to be married. As in a vision, the story shifts back forty years and discloses the interior of an orphan asylum. Three babies are there, two boy babies and one baby girl, awaiting adoption into a good home. Years pass and the orphaned children have grown up in three different homes. Miss Leonard's dearest treasures are a pair of tiny baby shoes and a faded plaid shawl given to her foster parents by the asylum nurse.
The story opens in a New York tenement where Miss Leonard is living in hopes of finding the means to support herself and little baby. A month before her husband had been killed in a mine accident and Miss Leonard sought the city, leaving her child m the care of a neighbor. She is aroused by a knock on the door. A youth of the underworld, struck with her beauty, has followed her home. He tells her where she can secure work. When he offers her money to pay for a new dress, she understands, and drives him from the room. Another knock. It is her landlord. She must pay her rent in the morning. Her eye falls on the card left by the "cadet." and makes a desperate decision that will change her life.
The girl decided after what happened at the garden party that she did not want his love any longer, but could not live without it. She decided to leave this world. Her unexpected caller had something to say about that. He did not have to read "Sarah Hardcrab's Advice to the Lovelorn" to know what to do. Being a very human and sensible person, he brought two young people together in his own original way.
A 1913 short directed by Stanner E.V. Taylor and starring marion leonard.
A woman realizes that her son is following the same path of corruption pursued by her father, a Civil War traitor, and her husband, an embezzler.
