The Definitive Guide Inspired by the Vision of Sex: Cult Guide

Dir: Fred Niblo

Mary Moreland discovers the photograph of a woman not her mother in her father's suitcase and sets out to find her in hopes of returning her father to his rightful place in the family.

Dir: Fred Niblo

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

Anne Mertons (Enid Bennett) is the unhappy wife of Hugo Mertons (Robert McKim), an unscrupulous brute. When the two struggle over a gun, Hugo is shot. Thinking he's dead, Anne flees to Hawaii, where she falls in love with Rodney Heathe (Jack Holt), who owns a sugar plantation. Hugo re-enters the picture and forces Anne to live as his prisoner in a hut. She overhears his plan to burn a sugar plantation. She is able to escape and saves the plantation, while Hugo is burned to death. Anne is now free to marry Rodney.

Dir: Fred Niblo

Millicent Lee is a young bride whose faith in her husband is tested when she finds a book in his possession entitled "How to Be Happy, Though Married", along with a photograph of a beautiful young woman.

Dir: Fred Niblo

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

Journalist Betsy Thorne travels from New York to Virginia to cover a story about the disappearance of Daniel Arnold at a supposedly haunted estate. In order to get into the house, she pretends to be a maid. In the household she meets Daniel's sister Dolores, the neighbor Dr. James Dunwoody who loves Dolores, and his son Roland, who is under suspicion. Betsy pretends to be tough, but when she sees a ghost emerge from the chapel, she screams. The result is that Dolores locks her in at night. The following night, Betsy climbs out of her window and sees the ghost again, this time in the graveyard. After some intrepid investigating, she finds that playing certain chords on the chapel organ cause a door to open, leading into a passage to a tomb. Betsy bravely pursues the ghost who turns out to be Daniel, though he has become deranged. Further, she discovers that he is actually desired by the law as an international forger.

Dir: Fred Niblo

An uneducated young girl becomes suddenly wealthy and hires the disinherited son of an upper-class family to tutor her in the ways of society.

Dir: Fred Niblo

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

A young wife slaves for her cad of a husband. When she learns that he has been "stepping out" with his secretary, she gets revenge by going after the attentions of her husband's employer.

Dir: Fred Niblo

Roger Moran, a member of a gang of thieves headed by Mike Wilson, is released from prison after having served a two-year sentence. He has learned his lesson and vows to leave his life of crime, but his girlfriend Betty Palmer--also a member of the gang--won't leave "the false road". Roger finally leaves her and finds a job with a sympathetic banker, Joshua Starbuck. However, one day the bank is broken into and the contents of the safe are stolen, and it turns out that the culprits are two members of Roger's old gang. He tracks them to New York and convinces them that he wants to get back into the gang, in order to find where they're keeping the money. However, matters don't quite go as Roger had planned and Betty comes back into his life.

Dir: Fred Niblo

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

Impersonating Little Eva in a third-rate travelling production of Uncle Tom's Cabin fails to earn Nora enough for a square daily meal, and to make thing worse, her stage career comes to a sudden end when the sheriff arrives with a writ of seizure. Nora hops a passing freight but is frightened by a tramp, jumps off, and literally rolls into the town of Wattelville. After being arrested as a suspicious character, Nora is adopted by the kindly Ma Forbes, whose son James works in the local bank. "Pug" Hennessy and "Soup" McCool, two crooks, inveigle the scrupulously honest James into a poker game and, as a result, he is forced to steal $300 from the bank to cover his losses. Impersonating expert safe-cracker Velvet Mary, Nora helps the crooks to break into the bank, but upon opening the safe, she sounds the alarm, and the crooks are arrested. Having learned his lesson, James proposes to Nora, who never again is forced to go hungry.

Dir: Fred Niblo

Cardinal Richelieu, engaged in intrigue at the court of Louis XIII, attempts to rule by threatening the queen, who is secretly in love with the Duke of Buckingham. From Gascony comes D'Artagnan to join the King's Musketeers in his quest for adventure. He wins the right to membership by proving his prowess with the sword and forms an eternal alliance with Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, the Three Musketeers. After many adventures, he embarks on a dangerous mission to England to recover a diamond brooch, a gift of the king, which the queen has given to Buckingham as a token of affection. He recovers it and returns in time to save the queen from the wrath of Louis, defeat the cardinal's intrigue, and win Constance, the queen's seamstress.

Dir: Fred Niblo

A fascinating piece of cinema that shares thematic elements.