Compare Films

An American Live Wire Synopsis

When Willard Geddie is told by his sweetheart Ida Payne's fortune-hunting mother that Ida no longer wishes to see him, the heartbroken man leaves New York and accepts an official position in the small South American country of Coralio. He lives an idle life there until news arrives that the President of Coralio and his mistress, an American opera singer, are planning to abscond with the country's treasury. By mistake, Geddie captures the President of an American insurance company who is trying to enter Coralio with embezzled money, after which the criminal commits suicide. Meanwhile, Ida arrives in South America looking for Geddie, but she is erroneously identified as the President's mistress and refused permission to come ashore. A detective from New York later arrests the President and the opera singer, believing them to be the embezzler and his wife. Finally the confusion is cleared up and Geddie returns to New York with the stolen insurance money and Ida.

The Duplicity of Hargraves Synopsis

Old Major Pendleton Talbot of Mobile moves with his daughter Lydia to Washington, D.C., where he works on his book of reminiscences about Alabama, while Lydia scrimps to keep up appearances. Although the young government clerks ridicule the Major's dress, vaudeville actor Henry Hopkins Hargraves, the Talbots' boardinghouse neighbor, cultivates their friendship and listens attentively to the Major's stories. When a new Southern play opens, the Major splurges and buys tickets for himself and Lydia. Hargraves, playing the lead, imitates the Major's dress, mannerisms, and speech, and delights the audience, while infuriating the Major. He castigates Hargraves, who leaves, to Lydia's dismay. Later, when the Major is broke and refuses to seek a loan, an old slave from the Talbot plantation, Uncle Mose, arrives and gives the Major $300 which, he claims, is payment for a pair of mules which the Major's father gave him. The Major soon finds a publisher for this book, and Lydia gets a letter from Hargraves revealing that he, as Uncle Moses, repaid the Major for his help with the role.