Hidden Genre Gems In Alignment with the style of When It Strikes Home: Cult Guide

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Clara Weston, on her way back East to accept a secretarial position, is delayed along the road and forced to spend the evening at a frontier hotel and dance hall. During the night, while a fight is in progress in the saloon downstairs, Clara is raped by a drunken surveyor who enters her room with the belief that it is the apartment of a dance hall girl with whom he had arranged a clandestine rendezvous. The next morning, Clara resumes her trip to the city where she learns that she is pregnant. By coincidence, she becomes secretary to Rex Fenton, her assailant, but does not recognize him because he has shaved his beard. They fall in love and are married, and Fenton unknowingly adopts his own child. Later, Fenton discovers Clara's past and renounces her for not being truthful with him. However, when a scar on his wrist inflicted by his victim betrays that Fenton was Clara's attacker, he begs her forgiveness, which Clara grants for the sake of their child.

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Chrissey Desselden, the ward of John Warburton, promises to marry him. Opposed to him is Robert Neyland, but he is not worthy of Chrissey's love. The girl, however, is fascinated by him, and not until his misconduct dismays her does she turn from him to John. After the wedding she recoils from her situation and pleads with her husband to treat her still as a child until she knows her own heart. This he consents to do. Meantime Neyland goes quickly to the bottom of the social ladder, but despite this Chrissey decides she loves him. With Warburton's consent she outrages her marriage vow by going to Reno to secure a divorce, Neyland remaining to plot against Warburton to ruin him financially. To effect this he needs money from Chrissey, which she wires him permission to use. However, she learns at the last moment what a treacherous purpose he plans with it. She throws over Neyland, who, through a culmination of other troubles, does the one graceful deed of his life by ending it. She returns to Warburton to be his wife in fact.

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Dr. Rundel has devoted his life to developing a formula that will revolutionize the medical world. Fearing that the romance of his assistant, John Stedman, with Martha Wainwright will impede the progress of the formula, Rundell forces Stedman to sign an agreement stipulating that he will postpone marriage until after the completion of the formula. After Rundel's death, Stedman is bound by the agreement, and Martha's father insists that his daughter wed wealthy Allen Cosgrove. When Martha sends Stedman a note that he must give her up, he suffers a breakdown. Martha comes to Stedman's aid and agrees to live with him, thus creating a scandal, which causes a confrontation between Cosgrove and Stedman. The problem is resolved as Dr. Rundel awakens from his dream and destroys the agreement.

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Poverty forces Mrs. Burton to allow the wealthy Mr. Fairbanks, whose wife has become deranged since her baby's death, to adopt Alice, one of her two little girls, while the other, Laura, stays with her mother. Kept in ignorance of each other's existence, the girls grow to womanhood and unknowingly become involved with the same man: vain, wealthy Roger Hamilton. Roger becomes intimate with Laura by promising to marry her, but Alice's wealth soon becomes irresistible to him, and when she quarrels with her fiancé, Tom Courtney, Roger presses his suit with ardor. On the day that Roger is to marry Alice, Laura tells her mother of her own affair with him; Mrs. Burton rushes to the church and publicly denounces the villain. Alice returns to Tom, while Laura is married to artist Anthony Gerard, who loved her all along.

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George and Alice Roydant live in the country with her wealthy uncle Nicholas Barrable, who wants to keep them from the city's temptations. After they become bored and move to New York, George neglects Alice as he successfully speculates on the market. He becomes involved with Attlie Damuron, an adventuress who soon begins to blackmail him. After George, upset at his situation, angrily rebukes Alice, she decides to accept the advances of Lord Sulgrave, a guest in their home. She sends him a note to come to her bedroom, but when he knocks, she regains her self-respect and refuses to allow him to enter. Sulgrave forces his way in, and after struggling with her, accidentally drinks her sleeping potion and dies. After George confesses his trouble with Attlie, Alice makes it appear that Sulgrave poisoned himself in his own room. Finally, Barrable arrives and helps them financially, they return to the country, and vow never to stray again.

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From an original trade paper advertisement: "The story of a girl who for months was in perpetual peril; on land, on sea, everywhere, Orient, Occident, and the Antipodes. And because of that peril and her narrow escapes it is always exciting, and will furnish gobs of entertainment for your patrons."

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Mary O'Brien, daughter of an Irish gentleman of declining fortunes, while fishing, meets Ernest Randal, who is trespassing on her father's land. Randal is the son of an English baronet and his conversation so charms Mary that she invites him to dinner. The next day, while out hunting deer with her father, a poacher mistakes Randal's peaked cap for a deer's antlers, and shoots him through the shoulder. Mary nurses Randal, who is taken to her home. They fall in love and Mary gives her heart to him without reserve, and it is with difficulty that he forces himself to leave to complete his course in surgery. Norah, the old family servant, suspects the truth. Mary confesses to her father, and with difficulty restrains him from taking her lover's life when he returns after completing his college course. At first, Randal says he cannot marry her at that time, and she defends him. However, overcome by her generosity, Randal asks her to marry him, and she finally consents on account of the injustice to the child, which her refusal would cause. She leaves, however, immediately after the marriage. After her boy is born, Mary obtains employment in a cotton mill, becomes prominent in welfare work among the employees, and forms an uplift club, which is cited all over Ireland as a model of its kind. Her employer, O'Farrell, also promotes her to a position of trust, and asks her to be his wife, but on account of her boy, she refuses to divorce her husband. Randal visits her and asks her to return to him, but she declines, reminding him of the fact that he has been wasting his life. Determined to win her respect, he enlists and goes to war. O'Farrell also enlists and leaves Mary in charge of the mill. At the front Randal saves O'Farrell from bleeding to death when his arm is torn off by a shell. Randal later is shot, and reported dead. O'Farrell returns to Mary with the news that Randal's brother has also been killed, and that her boy is the Earl of Randal; and Mary at last realizes what her husband means to her. A great joy comes when she learns that Randal is alive, although temporarily blinded, and she nurses him while he is recovering his sight. O'Farrell once more goes to the front, saying he has one good arm left and is needed on the field. Life now seems perfect for Marv, and her happiness is deepened when her husband gives her the deed to her old house, which had been sold to strangers when her father died and she begins with deep joy her new life as Lady Randal.

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"Richard the Brazen" is the romance of a modern knight who has all the flourish and daring of the knights of old, although he happened to be born in Texas in the 20th century. While traveling with his chum, an English peer, an accident forces him to assume his friend's title, valet, and monocle and leads to a meeting with a girl whom he had worshipped from afar in England. He is obliged to court her under false pretenses, and the complications growing out of this false situation culminate in a stirring fight with a burglar in which the true state of affairs is revealed and Richard restored to his rightful title as scion of a Texas family. - New York Dramatic Mirror, July 28, 1917.

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A young English nobleman is sent to Switzerland by his parents, where he meets a mysterious older woman with whom he has a torrid three-week romance.

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A fascinating piece of cinema that shares thematic elements.