Black Waters

Young rapscallion Penrod Schofield causes a good deal of trouble in his community, all in the name of protecting kids from too-strict parents and nasty neighbors. He heads the ABPA (American Boys' Protective Association) and through it disrupts a number of local social events. The townspeople are pretty fed up with Penrod and his gang, but when a couple of outlaws come to town, Penrod shows his mettle.

This film combines four short films under the title Bits Of Life. The Bad Samaritan is taken from a story in Popular Magazine in which the son of a Chinese father and a white mother is sold into slavery by his father. The boy becomes a criminal and a cunning but cruel thief. The one time he stops to help a lady in distress he is thrown in jail. Wesley Barry is the young boy and Lon Chaney the grown-up criminal.

Tommy Frazer is one of a gang of crooks lead by "Tony the Wop". Frazer gets caught and is sent up the river for three years on a forgery rap. When he gets out of prison, he finds his girl, Ann Whittaker, waiting for him -- and she's got a scheme. She is working in a bank and wants to pull an inside heist.

When eccentric Colonel Wynn threatens to kill Joe Benson if he marries his daughter Dorothy, the couple wed secretly. Their honeymoon at a resort is interrupted by Barbara Dow, a friend who threatens to expose the marriage unless Joe announces that Barbara is his wife.

Minnie, the homeliest girl in town, is devoted to her father, a discouraged inventor who has been working on a wireless device. Subject to the sneers of her neighbors, Minnie "invents" a lover and sends herself letters and flowers. Her stepsister suspects the truth and threatens to expose her. Desperate, she claims an unidentified body at the morgue and tells a reporter that this is her lover, unaware that the body is that of a Chinese man. The absent-minded reporter sees her heart and forgets about the big story. After further disappointments in the invention, Minnie's stepmother decides to leave her father. Her father then has a success and becomes rich. At a celebration, the stepsister and townspeople are surprised when a new couple appear, which turn out to be the former reporter and his lovely wife Minnie.

Three men, disillusioned in love and intent on getting away from all women, rent a cabin and retreat there. But the young woman who owns the cabin, unaware that it has been rented, is on her way there to escape from an unhappy engagement.

The rise of a raucous hayseed named Lonesome Rhodes from itinerant Ozark guitar picker to local media rabble-rouser to TV superstar and political king-maker. Marcia Jeffries is the innocent Sarah Lawrence girl who discovers the great man in a back-country jail and is the first to fall under his spell.

Mary Pickford plays "Rags," a pretty but wild girl who defends her alcoholic father a disgraced bank cashier, no matter how he mistreats her. Enter a handsome engineer whose family had once fired Rag's father for theft. Rags falls in love but realizes that marriage is a hopeless proposition considering her lowly place in society. But when she learns that her father plans to rob the newcomer, Rags betrays him to the sheriff, and he is shot in the ensuing battle.

Esther Blodgett is just another starry-eyed farm kid trying to break into the movies. Waitressing at a Hollywood party, she catches the eye of her idol Norman Maine, is sent for a screen test, and before long attains stardom as newly minted Vicki Lester. She and Norman marry, though his career soon dwindles to nothing due to his chronic alcoholism.

Wealthy Jarvis Pendleton acts as benefactor for orphan Judy Abbott, anonymously sponsoring her in her boarding school. But as she grows up, he finds himself falling in love with her, and she with him, though she does not know that the man she has fallen for is her benefactor.

Tom Sawyer and his pal Huckleberry Finn have great adventures on the Mississippi River, pretending to be pirates, attending their own funeral and witnessing a murder.

When the Great War breaks out, brothers Roy and Monte Rutledge, each attending Oxford University, enlist with the Royal Flying Corps.

A popular child star, exploited and overworked by her greedy guardians, decides enough is enough--and takes it on the lam.

M'liss, a feisty young girl in a mining camp, falls for Charles Gray, the school teacher. Charles is implicated in a murder of which he is innocent, and the two must fight to save him from a lynching.

Dinty is a newsboy whose fight to care for his ailing mother leads him into conflicts with the other boys on the street and then with drug smugglers in Chinatown.

In the year 1550, Sir George Vernon agrees to have his young daughter Dorothy betrothed to John Manners, the son of the Earl of Rutland. Sir George signs a contract, promising that the marriage will take place on Dorothy's 18th birthday, or else he will have to pay a large penalty to Rutland. But when the two children have grown older, rumors of John's wild behavior in France provoke Sir George to call off the engagement, and to pledge his daughter instead to her cousin Malcolm. Rutland now claims the forfeit from Sir George, and meanwhile, John has befriended Mary Stuart, the sworn enemy of Elizabeth, who is now Queen of England.