Editor's Top Picks Following the Footsteps of Meatless Days and Sleepless Nights: Cult Guide

Dir: Chester M. De Vonde

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

Venturing to New York to study music, Mary Vance makes the acquaintance of a girl posing as a student and through her is drawn into questionable society where she apparently becomes a victim in the white slave traffic. One day, Mary's brother John has a vision in which his dead mother appears and tells her son that his sister is in danger. Alarmed, John goes to New York where he discovers that his sister has disappeared. Suspecting that profligate womanizer Justin Lord may be responsible for his sister's disappearance, Tom kidnaps Lord's daughter Marion in revenge. Soon after, Mary is brought home by her fiancé Tom and explains that she had been in hiding, fearful that Lord had killed himself when he tripped and fell during a seduction attempt. The mystery satisfactorily explained, Lord reforms and John realizes that he has fallen in love with Marion.

Dir: Chester M. De Vonde

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of Meatless Days and Sleepless Nights perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

William Carter, a young Virginian in Paris, becomes enchanted with music-hall dancer Fanchon La Fare. After William reluctantly returns to America, Fanchon follows him, and when she is threatened with deportation because of an irregularity in her passport, William marries her. The marriage causes consternation in the upright Carter family, which is compounded when Fanchon performs one of her dances at a church benefit. At the conclusion of her dance, Fanchon sees a stranger in the audience and faints. Later, the same man appears at the Carter residence and demands to see her. Leigh Carter, William's younger brother, becomes angered and shoots the man. At the trial, Fanchon confesses that the stranger was her estranged husband whom she had been forced to marry as a child. The crime thus clarified, Leigh is freed, and Fanchon, who had been expelled earlier from the Carter house, is welcomed back by her husband and his family.

Dir: Chester M. De Vonde

Eileen O'Hara lives as a member of a cult in a remote retreat in the Adirondacks with her father, an embittered man since his wife's infidelity years earlier. One day, Peyster Sproul, the man responsible for her transgression, appears, and as president of the millionaire Sagamore Club, attempts to buy O'Hara's land for a summer resort. O'Hara recognizes him and a quarrel ensues, which results in the old man's death. Sproul then secures an illegitimate hold on the land by bribing Amasa Munn, the dishonest leader of the cult, with a small sum of money while pocketing the balance of the purchase funds. Upon receiving orders to produce the deed, Sproul attempts to steal the document from Eileen. His plan is thwarted, however, by Dr. Lansing, a young man who has fallen in love with Eileen. When Sproul's fraudulence is discovered, he is dishonorably dismissed from the club. Eileen retains her land and marries Lansing.