Underground Favorites Mirroring the Impact of Fighting Mad: Cult Guide

Dir: George Terwilliger

A jealous leading lady does herself out of money and honor, while the object of her jealousy steps in, carries the show and wins the love of the play's author.

Dir: George Terwilliger

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of Winning His Wife perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

A fascinating piece of cinema that shares thematic elements.

Dir: George Terwilliger

Following a prologue which shows that animals frequently desert their young, a jilted prehistoric suitor murders the child of the woman he loves. During the age of the Roman Empire, a soldier has a brief affair with a shepherdess, and long after he has left, she has their child. The shepherdess looks for the father, but returns brokenhearted after finding him with another woman, and then dies while saving her child from a poisonous snake. During the Elizabethan era, a wayward son seeks spiritual redemption through war, and is killed in battle. In modern times, a young, impoverished husband refuses to start a family, despite the pleadings of his wife. Then, when he finally starts earning enough money to consider children, his wife has an accident that makes it impossible for her to become pregnant.

Dir: George Terwilliger

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

A fascinating piece of cinema that shares thematic elements.

Dir: George Terwilliger

Factory owner John Gray takes ill during a strike at his factory. His doctor suggests that John's brother David, who looks just like him, take his place at home and at the factory. Although the two are look exactly like each other, in temperament and personality they are exact opposites--John is cruel and brutish to both his family and his employees, while David is considerate, thoughtful and kind to everyone. When John sees the effect that David has on his employees--and his wife--by treating them humanely, he begins to re-evaluate the way his own life has turned out, and why.

Dir: George Terwilliger

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of Her Good Name perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

A fascinating piece of cinema that shares thematic elements.

Dir: George Terwilliger

A fascinating piece of cinema that shares thematic elements.

Dir: George Terwilliger

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of The City of Failing Light perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

Episode 1: "The Jade Necklace" Dorothy Desmond, an inexperienced Kentucky girl whose father, an editor, had been shot at his desk by a political opponent, and whose mother had dropped dead of shock, found herself left virtually penniless. She believed she had a gift for writing and came to New York to seek a position on a newspaper. She was assigned to Chinatown to get an opium den story. She missed her escort and bravely and foolishly went to Chinatown alone. She yielded to the invitation of a Chinaman to enter his shop and inspect some beads, and he was at the point of attacking her when a storm of revolver shots broke, and a tong war was on. At the crack of the first pistol the Chinese shopkeeper desisted from his evil designs and shoved Dorothy into a secret room, the door of which he closed and locked on the outside. The girl was mad with fear. To her through the deadening walls came the sounds of the shooting. Then the shots ceased as suddenly as they had begun, and she heard faintly the gongs of police ambulances and patrols. Had she been liberated she would have seen white-jacketed emergency surgeons and orderlies picking up dead and wounded Chinamen and putting them into the wagons, while blue-coated officers with busy clubs rounded up other Chinamen, dragging them from all sorts of odd holes and corners and packing them into patrol wagons. "Worst tong fight in years," a sergeant observed pleasantly to a newspaper man. "Seven dead already, and some of the wounded sure to die. These Chinks shoot mighty straight for heathen. In the dark, too. What always puzzled me was how one tong could spot the other tong when they get mixed up in one of these nasty little wars. All Chinks look pretty much alike to me. You can never find out what started one of those shooting festivals. They won't tell a white man a thing. We can take our fill of guessing, though. Maybe it was a woman taken away from a member of one tong by a member of another. Maybe it was opium, maybe, you can think up a whole lot of maybes if you try, but what's the use"?

Dir: George Terwilliger

Matthew and Reginald Crosby, two brothers, and their cousin, James Thedford, manage an industrial conglomerate. Reginald marries an actress and gives so many lavish and ostentatious parties that one of them leads to a strike after being reported by labor editor Oscar Lackett. The strike leaders are fiery orator Jem Burress, German immigrant Louis Stolbeck, and Stolbeck's feisty daughter Louise, who is also Jem's girlfriend. John Stedman, a labor lawyer, lends moderation to the cause and thus impresses Matthew and Reginald's sister, Grace Crosby, who joins the workers. When Jem, jealous of Louise's infatuation with John, attempts to discredit him with the union members, Louise goes to John's apartment to warn him, but Grace arrives at the same time to accept John's marriage proposal. To prove her devotion to John and the cause, Grace summons her brothers to John's apartment, and when everyone converges, they finally resolve the strike.

Dir: George Terwilliger

A father flirts with an actress in order to teach his son a lesson and himself falls in love with her.