Compare Films

An Odyssey of the North Synopsis

To Cal Galbraith's cabin in the Klondike, one winter night, comes a starving, frost-bitten figure. Cal recognizes it as Naass, an Esquimau dog-driver, to whom he had lent sixty ounces of gold dust that he might buy release from the service, and who thereupon had left for a prospecting trip with Axel Gunderson and his wife many weeks before. Crouching by the fire, Naass tells his story. We see the feud in the Esquimau village between the descendants of two shipwrecked sailors, which terminates at the wedding plotlach of the last of the two lines, Naass and Unga. We see Axel carry Unga off to his ship, where he later wins her love and marries her. Knowing nothing of this, but always remembering the last appeal in Unga's eyes. Naass follows as best he can. From city to city he journeys, till a clue carries him to the sealing grounds. With Axel's ship in sight. Naass' ship is captured by Russians in waters forbidden to sealers, and he is sent to Siberia. Not even the horrors of the salt mines and the knout daunt him and he escapes, to make his way hack through Alaska to San Francisco. There he learns that Axel and Unga had left the day before for the Klondike, but at least he has a definite clue and a bait to trap Axel with in the shape of a map leading to a wonderful mine in the unknown mountains of interior Alaska, given him by a dying prospector, so with renewed courage he starts out again. At Dawson the long search is ended, but they do not remember one who had paid for Unga's love an untold price, and he easily persuades them to go with him in search of the mine in the mountains. The odyssey is over, the never-forgotten appeal in Unga's eyes will now be answered, and Axel is in his power. He destroys the caches for the return trip, kills the dogs, and watches with the exultation of the just avenger Axel's slow death from starvation and frost. Then when death has come to Axel and is very near himself and Unga, he reveals his identity, "I am Naass, the last of the blood, as you are the last of the blood." To his bewilderment, Unga laughs wildly, then denouncing him in a passionate outburst, throws herself beside the dead body of her husband and refuses to leave him. "But upon me there lay your debt, which would not let me rest. I repay." And giving Cal a bag of gold, taken from the far mountains, Naass turns again to the fire.

Nearly a Lady Synopsis

That a fork was ever meant for anything but spearing bread never dawned on Frederica Calhoun until the arrival at her father's big Montana ranch of Lord Cecil Grosvenor, a prospective buyer. He opened her eyes to an hitherto undreamed of world of refinement and good form, and she in turn appealed to his imagination by her crack riding, her beautiful lariat dances which the cowboys had taught her, and her unfailing sweet disposition and sunny bubbling good spirits. But on their betrothal, with its subsequent visit to Lord Grosvenor's sister, a New York society woman the idyll showed a flaw. Redfern gowns, afternoon teas and the formal social routine of the patrician Knickerbockers did wonders for Frederica, transforming the cocoon into a butterfly. But to Grosvenor it was demoralizing, and word of his escapades reached Frederica's ears. The night of the French Ball she borrowed a suit of men's evening clothes and hid by a stage door where with her own eyes she saw her fiancé come out with the dashing show girl with whom his name had been connected. Indeed, Frederica's "young man" makeup was so complete that Grosvenor grew jealous when Frederica eyed his companion so straight and hard. The fatal breach was widened when Frederica's prospective sister-in-law peeked into her room after her return and deceived as her brother had been, felt it her duty to inform him she had seen "a man." This Frederica spiritedly admitted, inasmuch as the "man" was none other than herself, but Grosvenor presumed to wax furious, and the absurdity of such a stand disgusted her and she tossed the Englishman over. As a matter of fact, she was glad of the excuse, for she had all the time been playing straight with him only at the expense of holding off an old Montana sweetheart who had come to New York and made good. Her hands free, Frederica returned to a man whose word she knew was good as his bond, and, thanking her stars she had learned in time that a man was not to be judged by the way he handled a fork.