The Definitive Guide Deeply Connected to What Women Will Do: Cult G...

Dir: Edward José

After many years, Dick Hedlar, a staff artist, stationed in the Soudan, returns to England to find his pictures have made him famous. He has always cherished memories of his childhood sweetheart, Maizie, and at an exhibition of his pictures he meets her again and the old romance is revived. She, still struggling to make a name for herself in the world of Art, refuses his offer of marriage, fearing that her acceptance would mean a hindrance to their careers. Dick tries to comfort himself with his painting. Bessie, a model, comes into his life and makes love to him. In the meanwhile love overcomes Maizie's decision and in a sudden resolve she goes to Dick's studio to tell him that she will marry him. She finds Dick repulsing the advances of Bessie and mistakes the situation as being Dick's overtures to the demi-monde. She leaves in disgust and refuses to hear his explanations the next day. An accident affects his eyesight, and gradually going blind, he completes his master picture. His bosom friend, Torpenhow, brings some of his friends to Dick's studio to admire the picture, only to find that Bessie has ruined the masterpiece. They keep the fact from the now totally blind Dick, and he as a last gift to Maizie sends the picture to her unknowing what has happened to it. Torpenhow, horrified at what has happened, goes to see Maizie, and she learns of the injustice she has done Dick. She and Torpenhow make haste to Dick's studio only to find him gone. Cursed with the blindness and with a deep ache in his heart, Dick has heard the call of the East. They follow the trail of the "mad Englishman," as he is called, for many hundreds of miles and reach him just as a horde of Dervishes are about to make an attack, in the skirmish both Maizie and Dick are wounded and die in each other's arms. In Dick's clenched hand Torpenhow finds the verse of their childhood dreams, cherished through all the years.

Dir: Edward José

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

An orphan in Africa unwittingly marries an abusive man, falls in love with and gets pregnant by an amnesiac, runs away and becomes a novelist.

Dir: Edward José

After a harsh childhood, orphan Jane Eyre is hired by Edward Rochester, the brooding lord of a mysterious manor house, to care for his young daughter.

Dir: Edward José

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

Episode 1: "The Vengeance of Legar" The story begins years ago on an island in the South. Enoch Golden, a wealthy planter, catches Jules Legar, a scheming physician, making love to his wife in an attempt to learn the secret hiding place of Golden's wealth. Suspecting the worst, Golden sends his wife away, and as punishment to Legar has his handsome face branded with white-hot irons and his hand crushed in a vise. Then Legar, set free, swears vengeance and begins his villainy by opening the sluice-gates that keep the sea from inundating the island. The waters rush in and the entire island is flooded and its houses swept away in the swirling waters. Legar kidnaps Golden's daughter, Margery, whom, in the next scene, twenty years later, we see grown to beautiful maidenhood, in his ominous power. Hate still lives in Legar's heart, and he sends Margery to a denizen of the underworld in whose house she is to be detained. But here steps in a mysterious gallant known as "The Laughing Mask," who saves her, for the nonce, from her fate.

Dir: Edward José

Floria Tosca, a famous Italian opera singer, suspects that her lover, Mario Cavaradossi, is unfaithful and secretly follows him to his villa on the outskirts of Rome. La Tosca is relieved to discover that Mario is harboring not another woman but Cesare Angelotti, a political prisoner. Her relief turns to despair, however, when Baron Scarpia, Rome's tyrannical chief of police, arrives and demands that Mario turn Cesare over to the authorities under penalty of torture. He refuses, but La Tosca, unable to endure Mario's screams, confesses. All three are arrested, and the baron threatens to have Mario shot unless La Tosca gives herself to him. She consents, but when Scarpia approaches her, she stabs him. Finding that Mario has been shot despite the baron's promise, she leaps from a high tower to her death.

Dir: Edward José

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

Laura Ward a selfish girl steals a large sum of money, her twin sister Agnes is mistakenly accused of the crime and sent to prison. Meanwhile, Laura abandons her sweetheart, alcoholic architect Richard Leigh, to marry an elderly millionaire named William Benedict, but she soon renews her affair. When a detective catches the lovers together, Agnes, just released from prison, agrees to pose as Richard's mistress, thereby saving Laura's marriage. Through Agnes's influence, Richard is regenerated, and the two eventually marry. Later, however, Laura reappears, and Agnes finds Richard drinking and embracing her. In a rage, William shoots and kills Laura, but Agnes forgives her erring husband and takes him home.

Dir: Edward José

In the blossom time in spring, in the sunny southland, Anabel Lee returned home from the young ladies' finishing academy. Warner Richmond, the favorite of society and beloved by all the maids for miles around, received notice to come to his grandfather's home to stay with him during his last days. Warner did so and on his arrival was warned by his grandfather to forego the society of the fair sex, but Warner one day passed by where Anabel sat reading and to her he was her prince charming. Forced to marry Anabel, Warner insisted on keeping the marriage a secret on account of his grandfather's wishes. Just after the grandfather died, leaving Warner a large fortune, he became enamored with an opera singer of fame. Destroying all records of his marriage to Anabel, he then married the opera singer, but love in this case lasted until she secured all his money. Soon believing her husband dead. Anabel married the sweetheart of her childhood days. No cloud darkened the sky of their happiness until Warner came wandering in his drunken travels to the old countryside again. Attended in his delirium by Anabel's doctor husband, he gives out the story of his life. The doctor returns to find Anabel gone with her child. He follows. Warner in his delirium overturns a lamp and the house burns to the ground with all evidence to clear Anabel's name. But love finds the way.

Dir: Edward José

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

Frank Clamart, abandoned illegitimate son of a wealthy merchant, flees to Paris and joins a gang of "society crooks" led by Chu-Chu and Leontine Petrovsky, his sometime-lover. To prove his prowess to the gang and to Leontine, with whom he has fallen in love, Frank attempts to rob the house of a well-to-do family but is shot by the owner. As Leontine escapes unharmed, Frank is inspected by the owner's wife, who, recognizing a birthmark on Frank's wrist, identifies him as her husband's missing half-brother. Nursed back to health by his sister-in-law, Frank agrees to renounce his life of crime, but when a jealous Chu-Chu breaks into the house and steals the family jewels, Frank is suspected. To exonerate himself, Frank tricks Chu-Chu and retrieves the gems. Determined to have revenge, Chu-Chu tries once more to rob the house and, when caught by Frank, shoots him in the shoulder. Frank pursues Chu-Chu in a taxicab, forces him over a cliff, then leaves with his new love, the cab driver, who fires a shot that kills Chu-Chu.

Dir: Edward José

When two love-sick young people run off to be married, and aren't caught, they usually get married. It was different with Grace Vernon and Hugh Ridgway, though. Worn out by the social affairs given in honor of their approaching marriage, they elope in the wee small hours of a certain summer morning, and being mistaken for housebreakers by the gardener and other members of the household, are pursued. A couple of cops as added starters make the chase even more interesting, and they don't breathe easily until, a couple of hours after climbing a rope ladder up the side of an ocean liner, they come out from their hiding place and find themselves at sea. Not nearly so much "at sea" then, however, as later, when Hugh finds that Grace is much smitten with Henry Veath, an old-time friend of his. Hugh cares nothing about the fact that Lady Tenny, another passenger, seems to care more for his society than for anyone else. Comes a typhoon, the ship is dashed on the rocks, and in the ensuing darkness and panic Hugh makes a brave attempt to save one who clings closely to him, one he thinks to be Grace. Then blackness, and with returning consciousness and the light, the realization that he is cast away on a strange tropical isle, the isle of Nedra, with Lady Tenny. Add to this that they are found and worshiped as two gods by the savage natives of the isle; that their enforced wedding is interrupted by the landing of a U.S. ship; that Hugh goes home only to find Grace married to Veath; that he finds that he doesn't care a particle; that he rushes back to Lady Tenny, and you have just a bare conception of this romantic love story.

Dir: Edward José

Learning he has six months to live, the wealthy Simon De Gex decides to tell no one of his impending death and to spend his fortune madly. He breaks off his engagement to Eleanor Faversham, then is approached in a park by a dwarf and enlisted in a plot to kill the deserting husband of the beautiful Lola, a cat trainer at the London Hippodrome. The murder plans are carried out in Paris; the dwarf stabs Lola's husband and Simon departs, only to be overcome by his sickness. Selflessly Lola nurses him back to health, but, ridiculed as low-class by Eleanor and Dale, Simon's secretary, she returns to the theater. Cured by a daring operation, Simon sets out to find Lola. His search is rewarded but coincides with the reappearance of the demented dwarf. In a fury of rejection, the dwarf accidentally blinds his beloved. Simon devotes himself to Lola, but she resists his proposals until a second miraculous operation restores her eyesight and frees her to marry in good conscience.