The Global Archive Complementing the Tone of His Secretary: Cult Guide

Dir: Lloyd Ingraham

While walking along the street one day, Arthur P. Hampton, an impoverished young doctor, and his chums, Stub Masters and Johnny Stokes, are persuaded to part with their last remaining funds by tag day solicitor Mary Jane Smith, with whom the doctor promptly falls in love. Doc's friends then hit upon a get-rich-quick scheme. Knowing that his Uncle George has promised a large sum of money upon his nephew's marriage, they persuade Doc to send out fake wedding invitations naming Mary Jane as the blushing bride. Uncle George, elated at the good news, writes to Mary Jane's aunt, Angelica Burns, an old sweetheart, to invite Mary Jane and Angelica to be his guests on an ocean voyage. Meanwhile, Mary Jane pays a visit to the doctor's office and, upon seeing the wedding invitations, becomes so flustered that she trips and sprains her ankle. Doc comes to her rescue and then begs her to pose as his wife. She agrees, but at ship-side, Stub and Johnnie confess all to Uncle George, who flies into a rage until Doc announces that he and Mary Jane have chosen a wedding at sea.

Dir: Hobart Henley

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of The Face in the Dark perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

Jane Ridgeway, the daughter of retired Secret Service man Charles Ridgeway, has inherited her father's knack for solving crimes and puts her talent to work when her sweetheart, Richard Grant, is accused of robbing a bank. Her father, now a bank examiner, works in collusion with two thieves who are acquainted with a master criminal known only as "the Face in the Dark." When the evidence implicates her father in the robbery, Jane confronts him, and although Richard is released from jail, Ridgeway escapes. The two crooks lead him to the Face in the Dark, but as the two men are shaking hands, the place is raided by Secret Service agents who arrest the mysterious criminal and congratulate Ridgeway for his fine detective work. Jane is happily reunited with her sweetheart and her father.

Dir: Hobart Henley

Susie organizes plays to benefit the Red Cross. She marries her hero, Robert, but finds out he did it to avoid the draft. She begs to be taken in his place and is soon captured by the enemy. Will Robert become the hero she believed he was?

Dir: Hobart Henley

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

Hard working Jimmy Dodd, the main support for his widowed mother and three unwed, bickering sisters, promises his mother on her death bed that he will not marry before his sisters. When Jimmy and his fiancée Emily Harrison fail to find husbands for the sisters, Jimmy lets Emily go and she marries another. After many years of complaints, two of the sisters marry and the third goes to work at a settlement house. Because of the war, Jimmy's leather business becomes very profitable. When he is courting flashy young women, his sisters condemn him for being a "gay old dog," but Jimmy realizes that his romantic efforts are pitiful and unfulfilling. He is deeply moved when he sees Emily's boy going off to war in a parade. When his sisters reproach him again, he tells them to leave and not return, blaming them for the loss of Emily and the child that might have been his.

Dir: Hobart Henley

Two baby boys are born in Owentown. One is the unwanted offspring of an avaricious grasping father. He grows to an evil manhood, and loses his one chance of real happiness to the play-fellow whose parents have met their responsibilities.

Dir: Hobart Henley

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of A Gay Old Dog perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

Sylvia Martin runs away from her abusive father and almost succumbs to the cold on the doorstep of Louis Gordon, a crook. They marry, but later when faced with capture, Gordon kills himself. Gordon's gang accuses Sylvia of murder, and although she is acquitted for lack of evidence, her name is included in the Police Index. Years later, upon finding the Index on the shelf of her second husband, Washington diplomat David Maber, Sylvia fears exposure. Her fears heighten when her arresting officer, John Alden, now chief of the Secret Service, tries to induce her to entrap a Bolshevik agent, Hugo Declasse, who is attracted to her. When Alden appeals to patriotism, she acquiesces. Declasse finds the Index and threatens to expose her unless she cooperates in getting plans for an uprising to London agents, but Declasse is foiled when his trusted Japanese butler turns out to be a Secret Service agent. Maber, learning of Sylvia's past, forgives her.

Dir: Hobart Henley

The Atlanta Journal on October 4, 1918, advertised this movie with the following blurb: "Atlanta's last chance to see the best movie to date of the wild, free days of Alaska, when men fought and women loved along the Yukon in a mist of snow and gambling hells and gold mining, is Friday and Saturday at the Strand Theater, when Rex Beach's 'Laughing Bill Hyde' ends a week's engagement that has drawn capacity houses to the Strand every day. Will Rogers, cowboy wit of the Ziegfield Follies, is the star of the this thriller and Will Rogers is second to none."

Dir: Hobart Henley

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

Mrs. Sherwood hates her life with her husband, who is drinking increasingly as a result of his own unhappiness in the marriage. Mrs. Sherwood is in love with Le Roy Scott, who encounters a woman of astonishingly identical features to Mrs. Sherwood. He contrives to substitute the other woman, Marion Roche, in Mrs. Sherwood's place while he and Mrs. Sherwood escape for a tryst. But Marion is much more the wife that Sherwood dreamed of, and he falls in love "anew" with his "wife," and she with him. She determines to find some way to permanently replace the real Mrs. Sherwood.

Dir: Reggie Morris

A fascinating piece of cinema that shares thematic elements.

Dir: Unknown Director

The Judge needs a present for his wife's birthday, so Harry suggests a new corset. They go to the shop, but he's so embarrassed to ask the saleslady he hides in a phone booth.Harry goes in, but finds a GUY wearing one, and runs out.They both dress as women to get back in, but Mrs. Rummy gets there and chases him out.