The Definitive Guide Inspired by the Vision of Mrs. Slacker: Cult Guide

Dir: Hobart Henley

Cora, a flirt, and the pampered pet of the entire Madison family who sacrifice to humor her whims, becomes engaged to Richard Lindley who does not know that Laura Madison silently loves him. Valentine Corliss, a former member of the community, reappears with a big stock scheme and Cora falls for him. Pretending love, he uses Cora and endeavors to get her father to become secretary of his company knowing his name and reputation will lend prestige. Cora brings Corliss the paper with her father's signature which later proves to have been forged. Corliss makes a getaway but is nabbed as he reaches New York. In the meantime, the townspeople who have been cheated demand the arrest of Papa Madison. Cora, to get away, goes to Lindley but he says their engagement was a mistake. She then goes to another admirer and they are immediately married. Laura, learning of the situation, becomes enraged, gets Cora, and brings her home where she confesses, despite her father's attempt to keep her silent. Jimmy Madison, to whom Papa appealed when he got in trouble, appears and with the arrest of Corliss affairs are straightened out. Lindley, who through a prank of little Hedrick, has learned of Laura's intense love, sees his error and they become happily married.

Dir: Hobart Henley

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

Susan Sweeney inherits a country hotel. When she arrives to take possession, she discovers it to be not the palatial resort she believed, but a run-down inn with an attached saloon. As she struggles to make something of her new operation, she becomes involved in the life and difficulties of her new community.

Dir: Hobart Henley

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

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

Glamorous New York model Molly (Marie Prevost) yearns for a life of luxury but spurns the advances of her boss' son in favor of a shipping clerk. Their plans for marriage and a suburban home are nearly ruined by a misunderstanding on her part; she is nearly compromised by the boss' son but is brought to her senses and returns to the man she loves.

Dir: Hobart Henley

Spinster cousins Emmy and Patty Hodges run the local millinery shop in a small town. One day, the women inherit a fortune from an uncle, and Emmy, determined to soothe her cousin's pain from an aborted love affair with Jim Heath years earlier, insists that they use the money to visit New York. In the city, the two women indulge themselves in shopping sprees but fail to find happiness until Patty hears one night of an invalid living in the hotel room adjacent to theirs and offers assistance. Upon entering the room, Patty discovers her cousin's old suitor Jim and learns that he was forced to leave Emmy to save his younger brother from a prison sentence. This revelation brings about a joyful reunion between Emily and her lost love.

Dir: Hobart Henley

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of Her Night of Nights 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

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: Hobart Henley

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

Lorenzo Carilo (Conway Tearle) selects more-or-less menial jobs at which to make a living, other more "select" jobs not paying enough, and then he meets and falls in love with Vivian Forrester (Martha Mansfield) the daughter of a new-rich family. What's a poor boy to do? He might pose as a French Duke.

Dir: Hobart Henley

The oldest son of a Virginia colonel, Barry Gordon inherits a taste for alcohol, the habit that caused his father's death. His brother, Tom, falls in love with Muriel Beekman, their guardian's daughter. Barry also loves her but feels himself rejected. Three years later, after extended travels, Barry learns that Tom, having been sent to Morocco by Mr. Beekman, has been captured by desert marauders and is being held for ransom. He begins a search for him and in Tangiers encounters the Beekmans and Kitty Van Ness. Barry and Muriel discover their love for each other, but he refuses to commit himself while Tom is still alive. At the bandits' stronghold, he rescues Naomi, a native girl, from the chieftain and is himself captured while effecting Tom's escape. Naomi aids Barry's escape, during which the chieftain is killed and she dies in his arms. Muriel helps Barry conquer his desire for drink and professes her love for him.

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."