Manolescu's Memoirs

The Music Master

1908

What is more miserable than love-blighted life? For the heart that truly loves can never forget. Such is the sad fate of the hero of this Biograph story.

Hell Morgan's Girl

1917

Roger Curwell (William Stowell) is disowned by his father (Joseph W. Girard) because of his desire to be an artist. But instead of making good as a painter, Roger finds himself drunk and on the skids in San Francisco's Barbary Coast. At a dive run by Hell Morgan (Alfred Allen), he meets Lola (Dorothy Phillips), who nurses him back to physical and moral health.

Beans

1918

Brewster, the bean king, has an option of renewal on a certain bean canning plant owned by Ellis. Ellis does not want to renew so hires shyster lawyer Wingate to help him. Brewster sends Betty to renew the contract but Ellis declines. Later Brewster sends his lawyer along with Ellis' man to persuades her that he isn't crooked. There follows plot and counter-plot, but innocent Betty carries the day.

Wolves of the Night

1919

Mining engineer and rancher Bruce Andrews marries Eastern visitor Isabel Hollins, stirring jealousy in rival mine owner Edmund Rawn and his partner Burton Mortimer, who both desire Isabel, leading to clashes over land, romance, and unscrupulous business practices.

The Song of Hate

1915

Roman Regent of Police Baron Scarpia, loves Floria Tosca, a beautiful opera singer, but she is engaged to artist Maurice Saranof. Inspired by jealousy, Scarpia orders his soldiers to torture Saranof for information leading to the location of a friend suspected of being an Austrian spy. Forced to listen to Saranof's cries of pain, Tosca relents and reveals the whereabouts of the friend. Spurned by Saranof for her weakness, she must then negotiate with Scarpia for his life and offers herself to the baron in exchange for a phony execution. While embracing, Tosca stabs and kills Scarpia, who supposedly has arranged for blank bullets to be put in the soldiers' guns. In spite of the baron's promise, Saranof is executed, and Tosca, destroyed, climbs the prison wall. Shot while climbing, she falls to her death.

The Rescue

1917

After divorcing her husband Kent, actress Anne Wetherall returns to the stage. Upon receiving a plea for help from childhood chum Nell Jerrold begging Anne to save Nell's daughter Betty from marrying Kent, the ex-Mrs. Wetherall decides to journey to the Jerrold's home in the town of Wheaton to investigate.

Penny of Top Hill Trail

1921

Penny arrives in the West by aeroplane. She is considered a suspicious character and thrown into jail. Kurt Walters, a ranch foreman and deputy sheriff, discovers that she is the same girl that his friend, Jo Gary, met in Chicago. Gary fell in love with her, but she confessed she was a thief. Since Penny claims she wants to reform, Walters releases her and sends her to live with Mrs. Kingdon. In spite of her teasing and taunts (or perhaps because of them), Walters finds himself falling in love with Penny.

The Love Route

1915

John Ashby and Allene Houston, two neighboring ranchers, are in love, but their parents' violent dispute over the route of the new X. Y. Z. Railroad eventually drives them apart. Colonel Houston and the elder Ashby are killed in a fight, leaving John and Allene to continue the feud, John accepting a job with the railroad company and Allene swearing never to cross their property.

The Dixie Merchant

1926

Goodnatured J. P. Fippany loses his home and takes to the road on a chicken-wagon with his wife and daughter. The wagon is wrecked in an automobile collision involving Jimmy Pickett, who falls in love with daughter Aida, and through a misunderstanding involving Marseillaise, Fippany's racehorse, his wife Josephine and Aida go to live with relatives. The disconsolate Fippany sells Marseillaise to Jimmy's father, sends the money to his wife, then disappears. Meanwhile, Jimmy finds Aida and convinces her of his love. Marseillaise, badly driven in a race, loses a heat, but Fippany emerges and rides her to victory, following which there is a reconciliation between husband and wife.

Sin

1916

Trilby

1947

Single-camera theater production of Trilby performed live and broadcast on the BBC. Intended to evoke the highly successful Trilby stage plays of the 1890s. Lost.

The Two-Soul Woman

1918

Two men, one of them a villainous hypnotist, contend for the same woman, unaware that she suffers from dual personality disorder.

Her Body in Bond

1918

The cabaret act of husband-and-wife dancing team Peggy and Joe Blondin is broken up when Joe becomes consumptive and is ordered West to recuperate. Peggy remains in New York to maintain the couple's income but gradually becomes desperate when letters sent her by her husband request more and more money. Joe's letters actually are being intercepted and rewritten by millionaire Harlan Quinn, who has designs on Peggy and wishes to portray Joe's situation as hopeless. After receiving a particularly alarming letter, Peggy consents to sell her honor to Harlan.

The Velvet Hand

1918

On a beach in southern Italy, Gianna Russelli practices her dancing with her devoted brother Russino, looking forward to the day when she will begin formal dance studies. One day the beautiful Countess Michetti comes to the village and engages in a flirtation with Russino, but when her former lover, Prince Viscomte, arrives with his closest friend, Count Paul Trovelli, the countess resumes her affair with the prince.

The Dawn of Freedom

1916

"The Dawn of Freedom" is a stinging satire on the death of those ideals that prompted the founders of the United States.