The Midnight Stage

"Tough Luck" Baxter, returning from a prospecting trip, meets Happy Jack Clarke, a former citizen of Baxter City, a boom town which became a ghost town when the gold petered out. A game of cards decides that Clarke will go back to Baxter City with "Tough Luck" in search of ore. Meanwhile, the Firefly, a New York music hall entertainer out of a job, is ordered by her parasitic husband Bert Wilcox to perform at the dance hall in Baxter City. Upon her arrival, she finds the town deserted and strikes out on the open trail.

With The Old Curiosity Shop and David Copperfield, both released in 1911, and Nicholas Nickleby in 1912, Thanhouser established itself as producer of the best Dickens adaptations in American film.

A con artist masquerades as Russian nobility and attempts to seduce the wife of an American diplomat.

A nobleman posing as a necktie salesman falls in love with the daughter of a circus puppeteer, although he's already wed to the daughter of his country's war minister.

An aging King invites disaster, when he abdicates to his corrupt, toadying daughters, and rejects his loving and honest one.

Chorus girl Mary Brown promises to give herself to playboy cad John Duane in exchange for $2500 so she can pay back a theft her brother made from his employers. Her sweetheart, race-car driver Jimmie, learns about it and gives her a check for $2500, but the check is worthless unless he can win the Big Race that afternoon. He leads through every lap but blows a tire on the last lap and finishes fourth. It appears that Duane will soon be hugging sweet Mary, unless Jimmie can find a buyer for a race-car with a flat tire.

Against the backdrop of Vienna's hidebound caste system, aristocrat and army officer Nicki is attracted to peasant Mitzi, although he knows it cannot last. Acquiescing to familial pressure, he ultimately gives her up to marry the more socially acceptable – albeit crippled – heiress Cecelia. Mitzi, for her part, is heartbroken and must resign herself to marrying churlish butcher Schani Eberle.

To decide a wager, two young millionaires decide to take a vagrant from a lodging house and give him the name and wealth of one of the pair, to see what he will do. By mistake they seize upon a young newspaper reporter down on his luck. The reporter enters into the spirit of the idea and wins the girl of his love and gets a better job on his old paper.

Jacqueline Floriot is driven from her home by her husband Louis, a deputy attorney of Paris, because of his unjust suspicions regarding her relations with another man. Floriot forbids Jacqueline to see her baby boy, who is dangerously ill, and when informed that the boy believes her dead, she attempts suicide.

Unknown to his proud and wealthy family, Granger Hollister marries Margery Harding, a telephone operator. Granger presents his new wife at an engagement party given for his sister Jane, but Jane's fiance, Lord Cecil Graydon, threatens to break off the betrothal unless Granger's marriage is annulled. To please his sister, Granger sacrifices Margery, who seeks work and later gives birth to a child. Following the baby's death, Margery goes West, where she befriends an old miner who later leaves her his fortune. Meanwhile, Granger becomes involved in a fraudulent mining deal, and because of George Osborne's perjured testimony, he is sent to prison for five years. When he escapes, Margery agrees to hide him and is ultimately responsible for obtaining his pardon. Granger then remarries the wife he once abandoned.

Hartley, fascinated by the vampish Leonie, steals and serves a term in prison. Not satisfied with this downfall, Leonie again works her womanly charms upon Dr. Gerald, who is engaged to Johanna, the adopted daughter of Dr. McLean. Learning of the woman's designs on the young doctor, Hartley denounces her in Gerald's presence. In response, Gerald foolishly renounces Johanna and his friendship with Dr. McLean. However, when Leonie discovers that Johanna is her own daughter whom she had deserted as a child, she becomes conscience-stricken, gives up the young man and begs forgiveness.

Toni Le Brun, a beautiful Viennese singer, becomes the ward of the wardrobe mistress of a Monte Carlo nightclub. Her benefactor, however, is actually a baroness incognito. Toni falls in love with the handsome Richard, but as they prepare to marry, she comes to believe he is only after the wealth accompanying her new noble status. But truth, like true love, will not be kept secret long.

A newspaper publisher finds out that his wild daughter has fallen in with a ring of gamblers. A reporter who has infiltrated the gang to get a story falls in love with the gang's female leader, and when the two are caught in a police raid, they find themselves in equal amounts of trouble.

A young lord elopes with an employee's daughter. The visit of a lady to her home causes the young wife to leave her husband. Years later the peer succeeds to his family estates. Approaching his wife for forgiveness, his entreaties are of no avail. He meets his daughter on the cliffs, and she by accident falls and is killed. The sight of the dead body causes the wife to seek the protection and consolation of her husband

Wealthy wastrel Neil Sparks devotes more attention to the pursuit of pleasure than to his inherited oil business. Neil's neglect allows two schemers, Craig and Abbott, to siphon the Sparks' Texas oil through the construction of an illegal pipeline. Upon receiving notification that his wells are running dry, and in an attempt to rid himself of the unwelcome attentions of his mercenary fiancée, Bess Kinloch, Neil ventures West to investigate, using an assumed name. Discovering the theft, Neil sends for his butler, and the two of them force the crooks to buy a parcel of land and deed the property to Myrtle Pratt, whose father had been swindled and murdered by the scoundrels. Justice served, Neil returns East to be followed by Myrtle and her five brothers, who arrive during his engagement party to Bess. Neil shocks his guests by announcing that the children are his, and he and Myrtle wed.

When John Conroy's wife takes his infant son Jack and runs away with another man, Conroy becomes a tramp and goes to Alaska. Fifteen years later, he returns and learns that his son Jack is being coerced into marrying Edith Wyatt, the daughter of a congressman, in order to further the political ambitions of his stepfather, Mayor Horace Manners. Conroy makes friends with the boy, who is unaware that the congenial tramp is actually his father. Jack loves cobbler's daughter Beth Stafford, and when Conroy discovers that Manners plans to frame Jack for the loss of city funds and thus scare him into marriage with Edith, he intercedes and insures that his son receives both his rightful inheritance and the woman whom he loves. After securing the boy's happiness, Conroy slips away without revealing his true identity to his son.

The National Red Cross Pageant (1917) was an American war pageant that was performed in order to sell war bonds, support the National Red Cross, and promote a positive opinion about American involvement in World War I.

Torment is a 1924 American silent film crime drama produced and directed by Maurice Tourneur and distributed by Associated First National. This film stars Bessie Love, Owen Moore, and Jean Hersholt.

"King Spruce" is personified in John Barrett, lumber magnate of the North woods. His domineering character is shown when his daughter Elva falls in love with a school teacher, Dwight Wade. Barrett conspires with his foreman, McLeod, to entice Wade away to the lumber camps, and finally decides to accompany the gang of men himself. He starts in to eject and burn out all "skeeters" who have settled on the land without domiciliary rights. Wade has shown his fighting blood by thrashing McLeod for an act of cruelty, and he now vainly opposes Barrett from motives of humanity. From the first shack burned emerges a wild girl, Kate Arden, who sets the forest afire in revenge.

Young sailor Edmond Dantès is wrongfully imprisoned, escapes, finds treasure, and reinvents himself as the wealthy Count of Monte Cristo to exact revenge on those who betrayed him.

Arriving with her husband in Arabia, Katherine Wyvrne is ready for romantic times in the exotic Middle East, but her aristocratic husband prefers to be out hunting "Barbara sheep" than fulfilling his wife's desires. She soon meets up with the dashing Arab chief Benchaalai and falls for his charms, but he has a much more sinister goal in mind for her than romance.

A broker who was trying to get rich dishonestly, found himself in danger of arrest. Just as he was preparing for flight a neighbor entered. This man had been poor all his life, but coming unexpectedly into a legacy of $10,000, decided that the broker was the man who could invest the money for him.

Sicilian king Leontes jealously accuses his wife Hermione of infidelity with his best friend, and while imprisoned, she delivers a child. Sent away, the child is raised by Bohemian shepherds. The Winter's Tale was the first of six Shakespeare adaptations from Thanhouser, and was the 13th or 14th title from the studio in its first nine weeks of releases.

A murderer is driven slowly insane by a sequence of coincidences and suggestive events which will not allow him to escape his own sense of guilt for his crime.

Convict Tom King is pardoned from a life sentence when he courageously helps other prisoners during a fire. He then goes to live with his brother Matthew, the hated mill owner in a depressed town, and his own son Max, who was brought up by Matthew to believe his father was dead.

Richard Gordon's lack of religious conviction prompts him to live a life of crime. When he demands to be included in a scheme to corner the food market, the conspirators agree to accept him as a partner provided that he contribute $100,000 to the operation. In order to obtain the money, Richard blackmails Harry Palmer with the aid of his girl

After having been wrongly accused of murder and robbery, a heretofore kindly and gregarious weaver becomes a nasty, bitter, lonely old miser. Originally a seven-reel picture, a three-reel re-release survives.

Minor member of a Boston law firm, Donald Joseph Blenhorn goes to Mexico to investigate Dorothy Charlton's fiancé, Hugh Hankins, who must meet approval of the firm representing her father's will. Blenhorn appears in Mexico disguised as rancher Don Jose, a Mexican aristocrat, and discovers that Hankins is a cad and coward.

A senator fights for the passage of a war-preparedness bill, while foreign spies conspire to plan an invasion.

A young man learns how to open safes to thwart a railroad takeover plot, accidentally forces a conspirator's daughter to marry him during a heist, and ultimately wins her love.

A home movie version of the Dumas play. A young woman becomes a courtesan and tragedy befalls her. Appearances are made by many socialites of 1920s Paris and New York.

The production vindicated the new feature-length movie format by restoring several characters, plot complications, and atmosphere that had been truncated in Thanhouser’s 1910 version of less than one-sixth the length.

Magazine writer J. Hamilton Vance travels to the mountains of Kentucky to get local color for his stories, and falls in love with Roxie Bradley, the daughter of a moonshiner. Regarded at first with suspicion by the mountaineers, Vance finally wins their confidence and is appointed teacher in the little log school house. The former teacher, resentful at the intrusion, attempts to shoot Vance through the schoolhouse window, but Roxie intercepts the bullet. Vance nurses her back to health, engendering the jealousy of Lily Bud Raines, who starts a rumor that Vance is a federal agent spying on the moonshiners.

$30,000 is a 1920 American silent mystery film directed by Ernest C. Warde and starring J. Warren Kerrigan, Fritzi Brunette and Carl Stockdale.

A young woman attempts to rescue her father from a gang that has kidnapped him in order to find out his secret for making "Fuelite," a substitute for coal.

Thanhouser Company three-reel silent film based on Charles Dickens’s story of an English lad's tribulation-filled journey to adulthood, Thanhouser released the three films over the course of three weeks beginning on October 17, 1911, one 1,000 foot reel per week.

The husband was stern, solemn and never could understand why anyone should laugh. The wife didn't have much sense, perhaps, but she was full of life and laughter. Why they should have married was a mystery; that there should have come a matrimonial shipwreck was hardly a surprise.

A good example of the clever light comedy Thanhouser produced for its Falstaff label, while other studios cranked out broad slapstick comedies. Harry Benham and Mignon Anderson were versatile and popular Thanhouser stars, here showing considerable skill in light comedy, a genre that invites plenty of satirical social observation such as the burgeoning beauty-salon industry here. Cinema technique shows much more intricate editing and freer use of closeups than just a year or two earlier.

Penniless aristocrat Yvonne Dupré ekes out a living selling her paintings to a crooked dealer, Leon Naisson, who passes them off as other more famous artists. Leon confides to his unscrupulous model Romildo, that he is attracted to Yvonne. Romildo drugs his lover, fiery Apache dancer Juliette who closely resembles Yvonne, then tries to extort money from Leon to have his way with her. Leon discovers the duplicity but convinces the artist's sweetheart, Dick Gray, that she has been unfaithful. As police close in on Leon, he frames Yvonne by planting forged paintings in her studio. Following Yvonne's arrest, Juliette is informed by her foster sister that she was stolen by gypsies as a child and is actually Yvonne's twin sister. Juliette exposes Leon's operation to the police, reuniting Yvonne and Dick.

The social climbing Flower family is comprised of Mr. Flower, a banker who has overextended himself financially, Mrs. Flower, a socially ambitious mother, Julia Flower, a marriage-minded elder daughter and Madge Flower, a high-spirited younger daughter. When Madge is expelled from boarding school for her practical jokes and pranks, she joins her mother and sister in Palm Beach, where they are wintering, in hopes of snaring a titled husband for Julia. Julia, fearful that her little sister will impair her success on the marriage market, forces Madge to dress as a child of ten. Julia has her sights set on the Earl of Larsdale, but after a series of misadventures, Madge elopes with the young man who turns out not to be an earl at all, but a prosperous young American who is holding her father's notes. Thus, she saves the day for the Flower family.

At the suggestion of his sons Horace and Henry, aging Ebenezer Boyce turns over control of his pistol factory to Martin. However, when Ebenezer discovers the extent of Martin's dishonesty and corruption, the shock gives the old man a heart attack and he dies. Soon afterward Martin is discovered dead, and the brothers begin to suspect each other of the murder.

Promising young lawyer Jack Dunn,, becomes a victim of drugs and loses his standing in the legal world. He passes his idle hours in the slums where he meets Nan Bishop, an underworld figure. Nan's influence helps to make a man out of Dunn and with her help he breaks his dependence on drugs and is successful in obtaining a position as a criminal lawyer. Years later, they meet again in a courtroom. Nan has been falsely accused of murder and Dunn is the prosecuting attorney. Learning that Dunn's professional future depends on his winning the case, Nan pleads guilty, but, at the last minute, the real criminal is discovered and Nan is cleared of the crime. She then accepts Dunn's offer of marriage and together they look forward to a happy future.