Editor's Top Picks Following the Footsteps of Dan: Cult Guide

Dir: George Irving

Jaffery Chayne is the spectacular one of four chums, the others being Hilary Freeth, a literary man, Adrian Boldero, a short story writer, and Tom Castleton, a playwright. The story opens with Tom Castleton going on a voyage for his health and leaving with his friend, Adrian, the manuscript of the first novel he ever attempted. Shortly after Castleton's trip, he dies at sea and when word is received by Adrian of his friend's death, the temptation to secure the girl he loves by publishing his friend's novel and taking the money and credit from it is so strong that he succumbs and becomes the "literary lion of the hour." Jaffery returns to London with the widow of his associate, who is an Albanian chieftain's daughter, the last one of her tribe. Jaffery arrives in London with this strange woman and she is introduced into the household of Hilary Freeth and meets Jaffery's friends. Adrian brings his sweetheart, Doria, and when she is introduced to Jaffery, it is a case of love, on Jaffery's part, at first sight, he having no eyes for Liosha, the widow desperately in love with him. Doria, however, marries Adrian, supposed to be the great author, and Jaffery leaves Liosha in London and then goes on another expedition. On his return he finds Adrian dead. His love for the wife, Doria, is as strong as ever and he tenderly cares for her and takes charge of Adrian's affairs. When Jaffery and Hilary are appointed the legal executors of Adrian's estate they find the original novel in Castleton's handwriting and nothing that could be made into a second novel from the pen of Adrian. They realize that Adrian has stolen his fame and fortune and that his conscience really has killed him. Jaffery realizes that the knowledge of this will probably be the death blow to Doria, who has always worshiped Adrian as a genius, so he takes the papers home and puts them out of sight in his desk and then begins to go through his own experiences and from them he writes a novel, signs it with Adrian's name and gives it to the publishers as the second work of the literary genius. The novel does make a tremendous sensation. When Jaffery proposes marriage to Doria she refuses him. The former starts on a long voyage. Liosha begs to go, too. Jaffery consents. The result is the strengthening of the love of Liosha for Jaffery. Doria learns the perfidy of her late husband and offers to be the wife of Jaffery in gratitude for his self-sacrifice. Jaffery, however, discovers he loves Liosha and Doria releases him.

Dir: George Irving

A fascinating piece of cinema that shares thematic elements.

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of God's Man perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

Dir: George Irving

Daughter of an Eastern lumber king, Stephanie Trent travels in the guise of a schoolteacher to the logging village of Trentsville to search for "a real man." There she meets Jimmy Raymond, a young novelist posing as a local while writing his story. When Stephanie comes to Jimmy's cabin to report a supposed plot against him, he acts as though he intends to assault her. She nearly throws herself out the window but is stopped by Jimmy, who explains that he is working on a novel and merely wanted to determine a young girl's reactions. In retaliation, she orders that he be kidnapped and held in a nearby cabin, but remorsefully nurses him back to health when he is shot trying to escape. They meet again at a hearing in the city, where her father has filed an injunction to prevent publication of Jimmy's novel, and she consents to his proposal of marriage.

Dir: George Irving

Gentleman burglar Raffles tries to get his hand on a priceless pearl.

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of Back to the Woods perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

Dir: George Irving

Jack Brookfield, a famous gentleman gambler of Louisville, Ky., finds that he is possessed of remarkable psychic power. His intuition in card games and other games of chance seems to be the result of mental telepathy or mindreading and his power over other men is a combination of hypnotism and will. He dominates everyone with whom he comes in contact. As a young man, Brookfield was deeply in love with Helen who answered his proposal with a request that he give her a written promise never to gamble again. Brookfield resented her distrust of him and they drifted apart. Years afterward, Brookfield, now conducting a famous gambling house to which only the wealthy come, finds that Helen, who has been married and is now a widow, is again in Louisville with her son Clay, a youth of twenty-one. Brookfield sees in the eyes of the boy the reflection of his mother, and his old love for the mother is awakened. Brookfield gives a theater and supper party in honor of Helen's return to Louisville, and while the guests are enjoying themselves, one of the habitues of Brookfield's place intrudes and makes himself obnoxious to both the men and women of the party. He has been annoying Clay Whipple ever since Clay first came to Brookfield's gambling house, and the night of the party, this annoyance reaches its height. For generations, the Whipple family has had a strange obsession in the form of a fear and unexplained dread of the sight of a cat's eye, and this fear is most marked in Clay. At the dinner party. Denning, the pest, is wearing a large cat's eye pin, and as he torments Clay, the boy's eyes fall upon the dreaded cat's eye. Immediately he becomes half-crazed but tries to control himself. Clay rushes from the room, only to be followed by the drunken, leaving Denning, who is bound that the boy shall look at the pin. Finally Clay, driven to desperation, picks up a heavy ivory tusk, which Brookfield uses for a paper cutter, and kills Denning. One of the guests of the party is Frank Hardmuth, the District Attorney of Louisville, who is in love with Brookfield's niece, Viola Campbell. Hardmuth is jealous of Clay, who is the real object of Viola's affection. As a witness to the murder, Hardmuth sees a means of putting Clay out of the way and he conducts the trial himself, obtaining a verdict of guilty, and a sentence of death. There seems to be no appeal from the verdict until Clay's mother is looking over some old letters finds one from George Prentice to her mother. George Prentice has become a justice of the Supreme Court of the U.S., and Helen goes with Brookfield to obtain Justice Prentice's help. The Justice agrees to be a witness for the defense. The Justice gives his testimony at the trial and then he and Brookfield, who has recognized in one of the jurors a mind susceptible to his telepathic powers, tries to project, by telepathy, the thought that Clay should be acquitted. Frank Hardmuth, the prosecuting attorney, is now candidate for Governor and just before the first trial, Hardmuth and his corrupt political associates had tried to murder the then-Governor of the State, Scovill. Failing in the first attempt, Hardmuth had called at the gambling house where, sitting with Brookfield, discussing the attempt, Brookfield had thought of a way of killing Scovill, which thought was telepathically transmitted to Hardmuth, and when the murder occurred in exactly the way that Brookfield had thought of he realized and felt that he was partially guilty. While he and Prentice are awaiting the verdict in the second trial, the actual murderer of Scovill, a broken-down gambler named Raynor, comes to Brookfield seeking information about Hardmuth. Brookfield's suspicions are aroused and through the force of will power and hypnotism, he makes Raynor confess that Hardmuth instigated the shooting. He then telephones the news to the papers, believing that the mental reaction in the minds of the people against Hardmuth will influence the jury in their verdict. This actually occurs and a verdict of "Not Guilty" is brought in. Freed from the law, Clay is still afraid of the cat's eye, but Brookfield forces him to realize that it is a purely mental state of mind and makes him get the cat's eye pin and hold it before his eyes. And finally, to prove that Clay is entirely cured of that fear and also that he is not a coward, Brookfield sends him to Hardmuth's hiding place to bring Hardmuth back as he intends to help him escape, feeling that Hardmuth was more or less the victim of his telepathic suggestion. This Clay does, and Viola realizes that her sweetheart is now worthy of her love. Brookfield promises Helen that he will quit his gambling and she accepts his word for it, and the old romance is completed.

Dir: George Irving

Louise Parke runs away to Paris with her lover Stephen Underwood, but because her mother, Mrs. Treadway Parke, misses her so deeply, she sends a wire announcing her return home. When the boat on which she is scheduled to sail is torpedoed, Mrs. Parke's physician, Dr. Granville, becomes concerned for her sanity and asks Peggy Murray, a newsstand girl who bears a remarkable likeness to Louise, to pose as the missing girl. At first the masquerade is successful: Mrs. Parke is happy and Peggy falls in love with George Landis. Soon, however, Louise returns unharmed, and Peggy slips away quietly. George finds Peggy working in the department store owned by his father and proposes. On their honeymoon cruise, the couple is surprised to encounter two more newly married couples: Stephen has married Louise; and Mrs. Parke has become Mrs. Dr. Granville.

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

Dir: George Irving

John Glayde is a stone-hearted man intent on wealth to elevate his family, losing his wife to another man in the process.

Dir: George Irving

At a lavish luncheon in Palm Beach, Walker Farr, a wealthy and idle young man, bets that he can live in perfect contentment as a penniless hobo and sets out to prove it. On the road, Walker meets Kate Kilgour and her fiancé, Richard Dodd, but upon his arrival in the town of Marion he learns that she is being forced into the marriage by her mother, who owes Richard $5,000. Walker helps a deformed but cheerful river man named Etienne Pickerone to retrieve the body of a woman who has drowned herself, and after reading the note found on her clothing, he goes directly to her house and adopts her little girl Rose-Marie. For a time, Walker works as an ice wagon driver to support the child, but a typhoid epidemic caused by contaminated drinking water strikes the town, and Rose-Marie dies. Having learned that Col. Simon Dodd, Richard's uncle and a corrupt local official, is responsible for the epidemic, Walker leads an election campaign that results in Dodd's defeat. After Kate settles her debt with Richard, which leaves her free to marry Walker, the "hobo" discloses his real identity, and all ends happily.

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of The Witching Hour perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

Dir: George Irving

Viola Donizetti emigrates from Italy to the United States, running away from her father and the fiancé he has chosen for her, determined to rejoin Tony, her sweetheart. Unable to find Tony, however, Viola begins a relationship with the wealthy Collingswood, but leaves him when she discovers that he has a wife. Then, Viola finally locates Tony, with whom she makes plans to get married. Before the ceremony, they check into room 47, while Collingswood, obsessed with Viola, goes to the hotel and moves into room 48. He writes a suicide note citing his failed affair with Viola as the reason for his actions and then shoots himself. When Tony reads the note, he decides to leave Viola, but the priest who has been summoned to perform the ceremony persuades him to forget about the letter, and then, finally, Tony and Viola marry.

Dir: George Irving

Claire Martin, niece of the wealthy Mrs. Taylor, suffers from loss of memory. Under the effect of this, Claire acts as an entirely different person. She wanders through the woods seeking shelter and food, and finally reaches a cabin temporarily occupied by a New York sportsman, who is fishing and hunting in the woods. For a week, Claire accepts the shelter from this sportsman whose love grows with each day's stay. Finally a strange rider passing the cabin asks for a drink, and Claire in her innocence shows her admiration for the new man, making him finally accept the temptation of her eyes to kiss her. At this moment Houghton, the sportsman, returns and bursts into the cabin. He drives out the stranger and then takes a knife and marks the woman so that she will always remember that her love must be for him alone. Houghton returns to New York. While walking down Fifth Avenue he sees in a photographer's showcase a picture which closely resembles the girl he thinks he lived with in the woods. He finds out who she is and decides to visit Great Neck and see if it is the same girl. Returning to his boat, Houghton looks at some pictures which he had taken of the girl and decides it must be she. He returns to the grounds of Mrs. Taylor's home and meeting Claire declares she is the woman who was with him at the cabin. Pushing back the dress from her shoulders, he points to the scar. She begs him to tell her what he knows about the scar, and he thinking she is bluffing, tells her to come to the houseboat and he will tell her. There Houghton proves that she must have been with him at the cabin and when he demands that she love him now as she did then and attempts to take her, she picks up a knife from the table and kills him. Kent, who has been over to the Yacht Club to a committee meeting, sees this when returning to his launch. He rushes to the boat and carries the fainting body of Claire home, gets her to her room and calls the doctor to see if he can help her. The doctor declares that the girl is guiltless of the crime, having gone back to her old personality, and they decide to make the case appear as one of suicide. When Kent is returning to the boat the following morning he finds there some pictures of her and her scarf, but when he himself is charged with the murder by the man who heard the quarrel, he is made to believe that Claire is innocent by Kent and the doctor, who point out to him the terrible weakness of circumstantial evidence. After Charlie goes, the doctor tells Kent that Claire needs care and attention and must be protected, and Kent in his great love takes her to his heart.