John Steppling

The best man at an upcoming wedding goes to a jeweler to pick up the wedding ring and is also given a bracelet, on approval, worth $25,000. On his way home, a pigeon swoops down and snags the bracelet. The man must track down the pigeon and get the bracelet back so he won't have to pay for it--but that's easier said than done.

Country girl Annabel Lee has big dreams of being a famous artist. Her widowed mother encourages her to go to the city so she can study. Annabel works hard, but she sells only one painting. She discovers that a renowned artist is spending the summer at a nearby resort, so she sends him her best work for a critique. A friend recommends that she see him in person, so Annabel pawns a piece of jewelry and heads for the resort. The artist informs her that she doesn't have enough talent to achieve much.

A young French soldier in World War I is overcome with guilt when he kills a German soldier who, like himself, is a musically gifted conscript, each having attended the same musical conservatory in France. The fact that the incident occurred in war does not assuage his guilt. He travels to Germany to meet the man's family.

While taking a morning workout, young prizefighter Danny Martin encounters Charlotte Hamilton in distress over her balky roadster. Martin wins his fight but is counted a loser by a crooked referee. Later, he is invited to a barbecue at Charlotte's home, but when John Hamilton, who strongly dislikes fighters, learns of Martin's profession, he shows him the door. Danny gives up his career for Charlotte and opens a health resort for obese millionaires. Hamilton and his prospective son-in-law, Penrod, arrive at the resort for treatment, and their indignation and disgust at the treatment provide comic complications. Learning that Danny and Charlotte have already eloped, Hamilton is at first furious, then resigns himself to their happiness.

Although her husband and children want to continue living modestly after they acquire a fortune from munitions, Mrs. Tompkins has social aspirations and persuades them to move into an exclusive country neighborhood and send their son Dick to Yale. When Mrs. Tompkins mistakes Louise Allenby, the daughter of her aristocratic neighbors, for a maid, Louise in jest pretends to be the Allenby social secretary. Dick, returning home, hears some girls giggling about Louise's joke on the Tompkins family and for revenge he becomes a groom for the Allenbys, but he and Louise fall in love. During a party, swindler Cholly Van Dusen steals some of the Allenby jewels and blames Louise who is put under arrest until her parents return. Cholly is then caught, Louise and Dick with revealed identities announce their love, and the Tompkinses are accepted socially.

A lost film. A wealthy young man's marriage to a mountain girl he meets while hunting is disastrous until she abandons him and later reappears incognito as a tutored and sophisticated woman.

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.

Bright young novelist Mabel Vere is engaged to Gerald Wantage, a prig who angrily objects when she advertises for a husband in order to elicit ideas for her new book. Mabel's roommate, Maud Bray, a physical culture expert, frightens away the less desirable suitors, while the writer responds to the more interesting letters, and soon becomes embroiled in a number of adventures.

When his honeymoon is over, Knox Randall shifts his attention from his wife Ailsa to his business. Feeling neglected, Ailsa accepts her sister-in-law Clarissa's advice that a little jealousy might re-ignite her husband's interest. Undertaking a harmless flirtation with playboy Porter Maddox, Ailsa discovers that Clarissa has fallen madly in love with Maddox, who is using her to accumulate confidential information regarding Wall Street secrets. When Ailsa overhears Clarissa making plans to elope with Maddox, she hurries to save her sister-in-law.

Princess Triloff, an emigrée from Czarist Russia, escapes to America where she becomes a patron of the arts. She falls in love with the verses of impoverished poet Owen Carey and becomes his anonymous benefactor. When Owen inherits a fortune from his rich Uncle Krakerfeller, he assumes his uncle's identity and confers his own upon an impoverished friend, Frank Manners. At a resort, Owen meets the princess and falls in love with her, but is chagrined to discover that she is enamored with Manners. The princess finally discovers Owen's real identity and the two fall in love.

Mary is marrying Jimmie, from whom she has kept a secret; Mary remains in love with another man. Problems ensue, jeopardizing the tranquility of their relationship.

The story to this comedy-drama is based on the book by Emerson Hough, who was experiencing a surge of popularity because his book The Covered Wagon had recently been made into a hit film. Ranchman Colonel Wright sends his daughter Bonnie to an Eastern college to receive an education. She decides to stay in the city and sends for her father, who arrives with his foreman Curly. Even though they live in the midst of society, they are snubbed by the Easterners as uncouth.

Austin Starfield has his greedy eye on a steel mill belonging to Eve Burnside. He persuades an impoverished count, Leon Molnar to marry Eve so he can then gain control of her fortune.

Percy Schwartz is the son of a rich trash-can manufacturer but forgoes joining the company business in order to write thriller movie stories about bigger-than-life heroes, which he also aspires to be. Percy is deeply in love with Ruth Rand, the niece of Dr. Rand. a world-exploring scientist who majors in the mysteries of the Orient. The latter, after hearing Percy read one of his blood-curdling scenarios to the awe-struck Ruth, decides to test Percy character. Percy goes to ask Dr. Rand for Ruth's hand-in-marriage and finds him in his study going through some Orienral artifacts with his giant Hindu servant, Kotah. Dr. Rand later informs Percy that Ruth has been abducted and he needs Percy to help rescue her.

Angelone, a poor Italian man, works hard in America to support his family back home and eventually bring them over. A mix-up leads to him having to serve time in prison. This film appears to be lost.

A maid is forced to take the place of the lady of the house when she is temporarily incapacitated.

Perryam is going through a round of bad luck; he is thrown out of school and loses at love. In search of a change, he heads for London, where he meets Audrey Nye, a former jazz baby who has gotten a responsible job on a newspaper. She helps Perryam get hired as a reporter.

Stratton's café is a popular place with the people of Cottonia, a wealthy cotton town on the banks of the Mississippi, installs flood-proof doors as a safeguard against an overflow of the river; when a flood comes, it appears that the entire town will be submerged. Trapped in Stratton's cafe, amongst others, are Billy Bear, a young broker, and Poppy, a chorus girl with whom he has been in love.

"The County Fair" begins with a nasty rich guy threatening to turn an old lady onto the street--unless her niece (who lives with her) marries this man's son. While she's dead set against it, the niece is a sweet thing and would do anything to help her aunt--even marry the rich jerk. However, a possible way out is presented. When a poor young man is taken in and fed, he turns out (naturally) to be a jockey and thinks he can win the $3000 prize at the fair and save the farm.

Wealthy racing driver Tom Hayden loses his inheritance and his fiancé due to a wacky mishap on his wedding day.

John Stuart Webster, mining engineer, having accumulated a fortune in Death Valley, Calif., starts for Denver. On the train is Dolores Ruey, a beautiful Spanish girl reared in the United States. Webster thrashes a travelling salesman who has been forcing his attentions on Dolores and thereby gains her admiration. Upon his arrival in Denver he leaves for Sobrante, Central America, to finance a mine found by his former protege, Billy Geary. Dolores is also bound for Sobrante. Her father, Don Ricardo Ruey, had been President of the Republic, until he was killed by revolutionists. They board the same train but Webster is seized with ptomaine poisoning and is removed to a hospital. Dolores is met by Billy Geary, who falls desperately in love with her. When he arrives. Webster does everything to give Geary a clear field, but after he has put Dolores' brother in the place his father held, he finds he has not only won a revolution, but a wife.

Gabrielle Jardee, daughter of a conservative Parisian family, is in love with an American, John Morgan, who her parents disapprove of. She is sent away from Paris to a small village, where her aunt lives with her sister and brother. The war comes and the Germans enter the town. She becomes the mistress of a German Kommandant.

Going Up (1923)

A novelist's success causes a rift between her and her rancher husband.

Lord Harrowby takes out an $100,000 insurance policy to be paid if his wedding to Cecilia Meyrick is cancelled. The insurance company sends Dick Minot to make sure the wedding takes place, but he falls in love with the bride.

By Whose Hand? is a lost 1927 American silent crime drama film directed by Walter Lang and released by Columbia Pictures.

All of the navy men in a California port town have fallen in love with Jackie Holbrook, except for Captain Robert Crowne. As a result, roused by the challenge, Jackie decides that she must add Robert to her list of conquests. Disguising herself as a sailor, she leaves port on Robert's ship, which is headed for the island of Vergania to quell a native uprising. On the island, Robert is taken captive by the natives, and just as they prepare to sacrifice him, Jackie leads a successful rescue mission. Then, Jackie reveals herself to be a woman, and Robert, impressed with her beauty and bravery, instantly falls in love, and makes plans with her for an immediate marriage.

A peasant girl sent to make a claim on her family's ancestral home in England's Wessex is seduced and left with child by its current owner.

After his brother's death, Arnold Downs, to save the reputation of his brother's sweetheart, Clara Myers, marries her, though he is in love with Sada Block, his employer's daughter. Five years later finds Arnold in business for himself and Block's competitor. The father of the girl never has been able to forgive the young man for giving up his daughter for Clara, and by bribing Arnold's bookkeeper he takes his revenge in driving Downs to the verge of bankruptcy. Clara's child, who is an adept at picture puzzles, takes some torn papers from the waste basket, matches them and shows them to her mother. Clara sees by them how her husband has been underbid by Block. That night she and her father, disguised as robbers, enter Arnold's office and take the traitorous bookkeeper prisoner. They present the evidence to Arnold who is saved from failure, and husband and wife discover that they have come to love one another.

Roxbury asks his friend Terry to assume his identity and go on vacation with his wife, Edith, and their daughter. When Terry falls in love with Edith's sister, a scandal erupts at the resort.

Mrs. Richard is happily married, but still agrees to pose as the wife of a businessman to hoodwink the businessman's rich uncle. Unfortunately, uncle plans to extend his visit, forcing the two schemers to keep up the pretense.

After an argument with his father, in which he is accused of stealing, Bill Carmody leaves home. His girlfriend Ethel is mad at him because of his carousing. So he heads out West, but he gets in a railroad accident and saves the life of Appleton, who owns a lumber mill. To reward Bill, Appleton gives him a job, and it doesn't take him long to discern that Buck Moncrossen, the camp boss, is crooked.

A poverty-stricken Cockney girl rises through incredible adventures to become the wife of a nobleman.

A young girl, stifling on her father's backwoods farm, is reinvigorated by the arrival of an army regiment, come to train in the area.

John Steppling is Billy McGrath in this popular series directed by Archer McMackin, of which this is the only existing example. Billy wants to be a Broadway producer but finds is isn't so easy.

When a wealthy young lady loses her inheritance, she decides to apply for work in disguise. In prim and proper working girl attire she becomes the respectable companion of a woman looking to reform her wayward nephew.

Jane Goring, a ruthlessly ambitious actress, forsakes her life as a wife and mother for the stage. Returning home from a performance one night, Jane is disgusted to find her husband Robert McNaughton victimized by a tubercular cough and so banishes him and her young daughter to a sanitarium in Colorado. Years pass, finding Jane still estranged from her family. On the opening night of her new play, Jane finds herself upstaged and outperformed by Gloria Cromwell, a rising young actress, who, unknown to Jane, is her abandoned daughter. Returning home, Jane is haunted by visions of her husband and child and begins to sob. Looking up from her pillow, she is startled to see her husband with Gloria.

Sheriff Pat Halahan comes into an inheritance and travels to San Francisco to collect. Faith O’Day, a cat burglar armed with pistol and flashlight breaks into his hotel room and demands that Halahan cough up his dough. Halahan sees her threat and raises her a one-dollar bet that he can return a brooch she stole earlier the same evening before its loss is discovered. Pulling off his boots to slip on his own “soft shoes,” Halahan sets off to do a little second-story work, not realizing the trouble he’s in for.

Jeff Daggett, owner of a garage in Rockett, Arizona, neglects his business for work on a new type of automobile motor, while Johnny Fox, his assistant, handles the business. President Holtwood of a motor company and his daughter Nadine are driving to California when their car breaks down near Rockett.

Jessie is the eldest daughter of Squire Gordon. Jack Beckett, a scheming adventurer, attempts to use the recent death of her brother and the mysterious disappearance of £1,000 from the Gordon household to blackmail Jessie into marrying him. Meanwhile, Black Beauty slowly descends from the position of a well-loved pet of a country gentleman to that of an overworked London cab horse. Based on the novel by Anna Sewell.

After serving in the Great War, international crook Anthony Trent resolves to go straight. He wants to track down the English private who saved his life, and discovers his true identity is Arthur Grenvil, the son of the Earl of Rosecarrel. Trent falls in love with Grenvil's sister, Daphne, and sets out to win the Earl's approval. He discovers that the Earl is being blackmailed by Count Michael Temesvar, the prime minister of Croatia, over some documents.

When showing a woman customer some ranch property, real estate agent John Weems's car is disabled by a terrible storm, and he and his client are forced to take refuge in a roadhouse. Weems's wife Constance finds out about her husband's adventure and, bored with her marriage, determines to file for divorce. Constance calls upon Reginald Jay to testify about the roadhouse incident, and Jay, reluctant to testify, feigns illness and is hospitalized, promptly falling in love with one of his nurses.

Lester Crope, who has a penchant for inventing imaginative stories, alarms his village by reporting that the dam above the mayor's house has burst; incidentally he "saves" the life of Catherine Willis, the mayor's niece. The town council sends Lester to Dr. Mills of Boston to be treated for his condition. Now cured, his propensity for telling the truth on all occasions upsets village life: he works in a grocery store and informs customers of stale products; he also ruins a real-estate deal that would have meant prosperity for the town. Dr. Mills states that the only way to return Lester to his former safe tricks will be to arrange that he fall in love.

A biographical film featuring the presidency and assassination of Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War.

Young, introverted New York attorney Jimmie Pendleton is notoriously shy around women. Instead, he spends much of his time embarking on wild escapades with his friend, Herbert Austin. To fund these adventures, Jimmie frequently wires his eccentric Uncle Tobias in Kansabraska (a fictionalized Midwestern location) for emergency cash. Chaos ensues when Jimmie becomes engaged to Herbert’s sister, Mary. Following the engagement, Uncle Tobias unexpectedly arrives from the West. Jimmie is forced into a frantic, comical scramble to maintain appearances and conceal his true, wilder lifestyle—along with his careless spending habits—from his visiting uncle and his new in-laws.

A lost film. A successful stage actress with a hidden past as a criminal is kept on the path of righteousness by a benefactor.

Bathtub movers on the job.

Millionaire Kent Whitney is warned by Bob Harkness, one of her rejected suitors, about the fickleness of his girlfriend, socialite Myra Hastings. Together they concoct a scheme to teach her a lesson. Kent invites Myra home to meet his family, and she goes, expecting to find an atmosphere of elegance and refinement. Instead, she is greeted by Kent's eccentric father, who affronts her with crude jokes; Kent's mother is introduced reclining on a couch, surrounded by yapping dogs and Myra flees. Upon discovering that the evening was a ruse, Myra decides to retaliate. She hires a fake minister, pretends to marry Kent and then deserts him, leaving behind a message explaining that the ceremony was a farce. Kent pursues Myra and persuades her that a real marriage is in order.

After her mother dies, a young girl is sent with her little sister to live with their aunt and uncle, who treat her terribly. The aunt and uncle run a show at the Panama exposition and turn her into a human butterfly.

Harry Elrod takes a job as a bellboy when he is disinherited by his uncle and fails in his efforts to elope with actress Kitty Clyde. He causes so much confusion that Uncle Elrod buys the hotel so that he may fire Harry. But Harry induces the other employees to strike until Uncle Elrod consents to Harry's marriage to Kitty.

Freddy Wetherill and his bride, Hyla, quarrel at her mother's beach cottage, and Hyla sends her new husband home alone. Seeking distraction from his troubles, Freddy enters a vaudeville theater where Undine, "the diving Venus," and her trained seal, Bubbles, are performing. Outside the theater, Freddy meets Undine's fiancé, George Fitzgerald, and becomes involved in George's effort to hide Undine's seal from a bill collector armed with an order of attachment because of an unpaid hotel bill. Complications arise when Freddy Wetherill's dying rich uncle, Cato Dodd, notifies him that he wants Hyla to nurse him. To insure he stays in his uncle's will, Freddy substitutes Undine for Hyla and takes George along to act as his "valet." Naturally, Bubbles comes along, too. This movie is presumed to be lost.

Unwilling to arrest Billy Carson, a crook who once befriended him, Officer Quinn forces him and Dan, his confederate, to spend a year in a small town.

Because of the circumstances of her parents' marriage her grandfather rejects their child, Mary. Following her their deaths she is placed in an orphanage where Mary finds hardship.

Bob Mortimer, an unsuccessful traveling salesman, picks up the wrong valise and finds it full of money. This gives him the confidence, which he has previously lacked, to convince the townspeople to invest in a new factory, prevent Josiah Wiggins from absconding with the invested funds, and marry Miriam Wiggins.

Lord Hugh Wainwright is a Britisher who, on his way to his California ranch, rescues pretty American Nancy Burton from a brutal peddler. Interested in Nancy, Lord Hugh obtains passage as valet to her nouveau riche uncle, Phineas Ward.

A group of boys are playing baseball on a playground, and one of them hits the ball over the fence, breaking the window of a house belonging to a professor. He calls in a repairman, who arrives to fix the window and is admitted by the professor's pretty maid. Attracted to her and wanting to see her again, after he fixes the window he sneaks back to the house that night and breaks it again, hoping she'll call to have him come out and fix it. She does, but it doesn't turn out exactly the way he had hoped.

Through sheer bluff Rodney Marvin gets a job on a newspaper; becomes editor Matt Hayward's partner; and brings about a reconciliation between Hayward and his longtime enemy, Mayor Gorham.

Eddie, a prim store salesman, gets locked in overnight and battles hoodlums.

The no-good son of a company owner is sent to investigate a problematic business deal.

Tito Lombardi a Fifth Avenue dress designer, causes his business to suffer by his generous dispensation of credit to clients, one of whom, Max Strohm, the manager of a musical review, has promised payment for his girls' lavish costumes as soon as the show makes money. To the dismay of Norah Blake, Lombardi's faithful assistant, who loves him, Lombardi proposes to Phyllis Manning, one of the showgirls, and presents her with his finest creations, while not even attempting to kiss her, as she puts off setting a wedding date and also accepts the attentions of wealthy bachelor Bob Tarrant.

"Damaged Goods" pictures the terrible consequences of vice and the physical ruin that follows the abuse of moral law. It is a stirring plea for a pure life before marriage, in order to make impossible the transmission of hereditary traits to future generations.

Short comedy about a janitor at a bank that pretends to be a director in order to impress a girl.