The Right to Be Happy

Dearie Lane refuses to marry Fred Millard, whom she loves, because of her previous affair with roué Mark Winfield. When she confesses, Fred forgives her, and they marry and live happily in a modest home until the owner, who turns out to be Winfield, comes to collect a delinquent payment and suddenly dies. Dearie, afraid that the absent Fred will misunderstand, hides the body with the help of a boarder and a cook until midnight when they carry it down the stairs to the countryside, but the creaking of the steps is heard by Fred.

Judy Nichols (Leatrice Joy), a poor girl from Chicago, has decided she cannot marry without money. Her sweetheart, Ronald McKane, a struggling civil engineer (Edmund Burns), is encouraging her to join him in New York, but she only goes when she is bequeathed an inheritance. Unfortunately, the amount adds up to less than ten dollars a week. When she meets banker Sanford Gillespie (Robert Edeson), she convinces him to help McKane out financially. Once McKane has become a success, Judy marries him, but then he becomes interested in another woman. Judy seeks revenge and asks Gillespie to ruin her estranged husband, offering him anything he wants in return.

Jim Warren, a crook, is married to Norma, but there was a flaw in their marriage papers and he must marry her again to protect their unborn child. He returns home and gives her some money but it has been stolen and she is sent to jail as an accomplice. To get her out, he is forced to marry another woman and Norma, thinking Jim has deserted her marries Phil Powers, and gives birth to Jim's daughter. Years later, Jim meets his daughter in the midst of a blackmail scheme against Norma over her earlier imprisonment. The daughter shoots the blackmailer, and Jim takes the blame.

M'liss, raised in the mountains as an unruly tomboy, is orphaned and is offered "protection" by Calaveras John and Johnny Cake, friends of her father's murderer. She shows no interest in anything until the new schoolmaster persuades her to tidy herself and get some education. Believing the schoolmaster to be in love with some other girl, M'liss decides to run off with another man.

Erstwhile childhood friends, Judah Ben-Hur and Messala meet again as adults, this time with Roman officer Messala as conqueror and Judah as a wealthy, though conquered, Israelite. A slip of a brick during a Roman parade causes Judah to be sent off as a galley slave, his property confiscated and his mother and sister imprisoned. Years later, as a result of his determination to stay alive and his willingness to aid his Roman master, Judah returns to his homeland an exalted and wealthy Roman athlete. Unable to find his mother and sister, and believing them dead, he can think of nothing else than revenge against Messala.

The deformed Phantom who haunts the Paris Opera House causes murder and mayhem in an attempt to make the woman he loves a star.

Disappearances and strange goings-on in a spooky old mansion.

Fenella, a poor Italian girl, falls in love with a Spanish nobleman, but their affair triggers a revolution and national catastrophe.

In the early eighteenth century, pirate captain Jean Lafitte fights a rival pirate and wins a treasure and a beautiful female captive. Although the girl offers herself to Lafitte to save her English lover, Lafitte makes him walk the plank. The girl then places a curse on Lafitte and his descendants, preventing them from ever knowing the true love of woman. Two hundred years later, in the West Antilles, painter Paul Winthrop poses Joe, a pearl diver, as a pirate. Upon seeing the completed painting, each envisions the earlier situation. Later, Joe finds the buried treasure and sails to New York, where he learns that the portrait has also attracted wealthy Lily Demorest and her suitor, Robert Spurr, a "financial pirate."

A race between a British clipper ship and an American ship of a new design will determine the right to transport Chinese tea.

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.

Lucille, a beautiful and romantic young woman, marries John Linforth, a wealthy businessman, who is twice her age, and too distracted by his business affairs to give her the attention she craves.

Ex-convict Dale Revenal arrives at Dudley Appleton's ranch bearing a letter of introduction from John Silver, Appleton's old friend. Appleton hires Dale, who, through his winning manner, soon wins the respect of the ranch hands and the love of the ranch owner's daughter Mary Jane. Believing himself unworthy of her, Dale tells Mary Jane that he has a wife and child in Arizona, and she reluctantly agrees to marry Jack Nelda, a local rancher. Nelda realizes that Mary Jane is still in love with Dale and plots with Bessie Dupont and her brother Pinto to kill him.

Miner Dan Stuyvesant finally strikes it rich, but on his way to report his claim, he is shot. When Jack Dedlow, the head of a gang of outlaws, hears this news, he rides to Stuyvesant's cabin intending to secure the claim for himself. There the outlaws find Stuyvesant's daughter Hilda, the sweetheart of Tom Flynn, and are about to draw cards for her when Dago Sam pulls out his guns and spirits her out the door. Because Tom is his only friend, Sam determines to protect Hilda from the gang, but when Tom suspiciously questions his intentions toward Hilda, Sam decides to live up to the town's poor opinion of him.

When Marie Louise, the daughter of the town factor, returns home from school, Julio Sandoval, a reckless young half-breed ruled by his animal instincts, develops a passion for the girl, even though she is engaged to Captain McKeever of the mounted police. Meeting Marie when she is alone in the woods one day, the half-breed carries her to his cabin on the mountain top where he collapses from an attack of mountain fever brought on by overexertion.

A propagandistic view of the First World War, showing the political greed of the German Kaiser Wilhelm, the resistance of some of his own soldiers, and fanciful prediction of the nature of the war's end.