Across the Footlights

Swashbuckling serial starring Eddie Polo. Chapter titles: 1. Shanghaied 2. The Pirate's Slave 3. Hidden Treasure 4. The Lost Fortune 5. The Missing Plans 6. Trapped 7. The Secret Passage 8. Outwitted 9. The Third Degree 10. Double-Crossed 11. [unknown] 12. A Fight for a Fortune 13. [unknown] 14. A Fight in Mid-Air 15. Victory and Happiness.

Disowned by her family for marrying beneath her class, Alice Larkin lives in a modest home with her husband, John, and their children. Meanwhile, wealthy Ethel Lewis is separated from her husband, Robert, because she refuses to have children. On Ethel's behalf, a lawyer offers Alice $50,000 in exchange for the adoption of her youngest child, Louise. After Alice reluctantly accepts, Ethel presents the child to Robert as their own. Alice visits the Lewis home frequently, rekindling Robert's long-dormant romantic feelings for her. John is consumed with jealousy and attempts to shoot Robert, but accidentally hits Louise. Alice then awakens to find that it was a horrible dream. She refuses the lawyer's offer just as her Aunt Martha enters with apologies and Christmas presents.

To gain access to a moonshiner, a detective marries the moonshiner's sister. He abandons her after the arrest is made but his conscience haunts him.

Traveling evangelist Ephram Judson (Albert Tavernier) is met with some formidable opposition in the person of avowed atheist Hugh Lee (Frank Mills). It seems that Lee disavowed the existence of God when his beloved sister was stricken with blindness. Judson's daughter Ruth (Jane Grey) does her best to convert Lee, but it's a losing battle. Even worse, a series of bizarre coincidences leads the villagers to conclude (wrongly) that Lee has tried to "have his way" with the virginal Ruth. On the verge of being lynched by the angry townsfolk, Lee is saved by a timely bolt of lightning -- whereupon he embraces that Old Time Religion in a real hurry. Cast as Ruth's ne'er-do-well brother Tom is diminutive Percy Helton, best known to latter-day film buffs for his raspy-voiced character roles in such talkies as The Robe, Kiss Me Deadly and The Music Man.

1929 American Western film directed by Burton L. King.

Aaron Abrams' daughter Rachel died broken-hearted after her marriage was cruelly annulled by her father-in-law Roger Mortimer, and so years later, his oath of revenge remembered, Abrams has plans to destroy Mortimer's son Russel, unaware and uncaring how the happiness of the people he loves most has became intertwined with the Mortimer family.

Camilla Van Dam is in love with her rich father's poor employee, John Hamilton. Van Dam is against their marriage but proposes an arrangement to which Camilla agrees. Van Dam goes abroad with the understanding that she will not marry for a year or reveal her whereabouts to Hamilton. Announcing to the press that she is accompanying her father, Camilla instead gets a job as a chorus girl, takes an apartment, and supports herself. Hamilton finds her and joins in the deception until Van Dam's secretary tries to make off with the fortune on hearing the false rumor of Van Dam's death. Van Dam consents readily to his daughter's marriage when he returns.

Typhus specialist Dr. David West has fought long and hard for the construction of the new municipal waterworks. Harrison Blake, the town's leading lawyer and banker, conspires to have the waterworks put into private hands and frames David for accepting a bribe. As none of the town's lawyers will take the case, Katherine, David's daughter and a recent law school graduate, accepts her first client in her father. However, the circumstantial evidence is too great and David is convicted. Harrison bribes a worker to sabotage the waterworks, causing a public clamor for their takeover by private interests. Katherine, with the aid of newspaper editor Arnold Bruce, uncovers the conspiracy after the outbreak of a typhus epidemic. David is freed, and Katherine weds Arnold.

Raised in the lap of luxury, Norma Russell is ill-prepared for her father's financial reverses. In exchange for a $25,000 loan, Norma's dad promises her hand in marriage to bank president Howard Dundore.

Pierre Felix, a couturier, makes a $25,000 bet with Ralph Courtland that he can take a girl from the streets, dress her appropriately, and within three months have her accepted into society.

When widowed attorney Richard Tucker refuses to defend bootlegger Julius Molnar in court, the latter swears revenge. Tucker pays no heed to Molnar, concentrating instead on his impending marriage to his secretary Irene Rich. After his release from prison, the bootlegger begins his campaign of vengeance by leading Tucker's beloved daughter Janet Vale astray.

Cruel and ignorant, Matthew Ryan threatens to destroy his business competitor, Schuyler, unless Schuyler's daughter Marion succumbs to his demands, Marion likens Ryan to Attila the Hun. Puzzled by Marion's reference, Ryan returns home to read an account of Attila. Falling asleep while reading, he dreams of a mysterious figure who draws parallels between Ryan and Attila. Attila is depicted as a cruel and brutish figure who wreaks havoc across the Eastern Empire, until finally meeting his death at the hands of his abused bride. Upon awakening, Ryan is so deeply affected by his experiences that he begs forgiveness for his vicious behavior and frees Marion from his demands.

Wealthy Lucy Winter falls in love itinerant gardener George Turner much to her father's chagrin. In flashback we find there is a deep seated reason for his truculence, one that caused great sorrow to all. In time things are resolved after much soul searching.

Leone Daingerfield, a ruthless old woman, tries to crush the romance between her heir, Edward Daingerfield, and her granddaughter, Judith, whose blood relationship she refuses to acknowledge.

Nancy Page is a frivolous socialite until her husband Richard becomes entangled in his employer David Davenport's shady business dealings.

Esther Wells is dumped by her husband, Martin, just as she's boarding a train. She gets off at the next stop, wanders into a cabin owned by Samuel Radburn, who happens to have been swindled out of a mine by Martin.