The Magic of the Mandarin 1909
A Saturn film directed by Johann Schwarzer.
A Saturn film directed by Johann Schwarzer.
Two boys, twins, leave the old homestead to seek their fortune in the world. They go divergent roads, and are soon widely separated one from the other, but they grow lonesome and try to find each other's whereabouts, without success. We lose sight of Bill and Dick is seen up against it good and hard. For him the future looks like a chalk ring on a blackboard, until he happens to saunter along the Bowery, where the manager of a dime museum offers him a job to play the gorilla. It looks good so he accepts. It is pretty sort until the astute impresario decides to pull off an innovation: that is, a gorilla and lion in the same cage. Of course Dick objects most strenuously to this arrangement, but his objections are quailed with a treacherous looking run, so he is forced to share the same menagerie hallroom with the lion.
A shoe-factory worker puts a note in a shoe box offering to marry the lucky buyer. As a result, she is dismissed from her job, but her employer finds her so attractive that he suggests a new job for her, as his wife.
Jim Flanders, a wealthy ranchman, has a beautiful daughter, Alice, who is loved by Tom Ripley, the foreman of the ranch. The match is objected to by Flanders, who desires his daughter to wed a more cultured and refined man.
A Duke's daughter is loved by a gallant knight, but her father wants her to marry another. With the help of his friends, the knight hatches an elaborate scheme to marry his sweetheart.
Mercedes orders her sweetheart to prove his love by doing something dangerously heroic. He agrees, breaking into another young woman's house in order to steal a photograph. The young woman catches him and has him arrested, but he is released when a family friend bribes the police. Mercedes eventually returns the stolen photograph only to find her boyfriend in the other woman's arms.
Charles Shea, the handsome young foreman of the Bar Z ranch, has won the love of the winsome daughter of his employer, John Graham. Alice and he are engaged to be married when a telegram announcing the death of his father and the request that he immediately return East, is handed Shea. Promising to return immediately the estate is settled. Shea bids Alice good-bye and leaves for the East. A year passes and no word from Charley. The girl is in despair and. though every cowpuncher on the place loves her madly, she refuses each one in turn, declaring that she will wait for Charley, whom she is sure will return soon.
A wife offers to support her artist husband by teaching piano. She can't find work at the conservatory, and ends up working in a laundry, without telling him the truth. When he discovers her lie, he is determined to leave her, until she is injured and he understands the sacrifice she made for him.
“The Biograph people tell an excellent story in this, and tell it so strongly that it grips very close. The scene where the husband gets into the room to find his wife bending over the dead body of a man is very strong, though perhaps not materially stronger than the one where the girl’s first husband deserts her. Technically the film is excellent. All the little details are worked out to precision and the characters act naturally, as real people might be expected to do in similar circumstances.” --Moving Picture World
Max at an evening party takes a necklace from one of the guests and makes good his escape. The guests and the police set out in pursuit but Max employs some novel methods and among others mounts a boat on the water chute and finally makes good his escape in a balloon which soars far out of reach of his would-be captors. This film is just cram full of novel situations and laughable episodes.
Fanny is the wife of Ben Webster, a trapper, and while he is an affectionate and dutiful husband, she yearns for something which appears better than her lot. She reasons: "Have I not youth and beauty and attainments far above this environment? Why should I be compelled to toil and struggle in this wilderness?"
Nellie flees her old life and goes east to become a nurse, where she marries a doctor. One of her old colleagues finds her and tries to blackmail her. When the blackmail plot is exposed, Nellie's husband expresses his complete faith in her.
A neighbor visits her friend, taking with her her child, a little girl about the same age as the friend's little girl. Both children being full of mischief, they immediately put into execution a number of startling and ingenious pranks. While the laundry maid is entertaining her policeman lover, the children pin the policeman's coat tail to a sheet which is being ironed by the laundry maid. They next get a trap containing some mice and let them loose in the parlor where their parents are entertaining guests at a card party. They put the cat in the piano, make finger marks with flour on the hack of father's coat, causing his wife to think he has been embraced by the cook; they find grandfather asleep, his slippers lying on the floor, and nail the slippers down, and grandpa upon awakening receives a severe fall.
Mr. and Mrs. Hilton throw a New Year's Eve party. They agree not to drink the punch themselves, but as guests begin to arrive their resolve weakens, and soon they are both cavorting drunkenly. Next morning Mr. Hilton, feeling very sick, is conscience-stricken over his drunkenness and his behavior with another woman. He fears to face his wife until he discovers that she feels just as guilty herself.
At the Italian boarding house the male boarders were all smitten with the charms of Minnie, the landlady's pretty daughter, but she was of a poetic turn of mind and her soul soared above plebeianism and her aspirations were romantic. Most persistent among her suitors was Grigo, a coarse Sicilian, whose advances were odiously repulsive. The arrival at the boarding house from the old country of Giuseppe Cassella, the violinist, filled the void in her yearning heart. Romantic, poetic and a talented musician, Giuseppe was indeed a desirable husband for Minnie.
Oh, the woe of simultaneous birthdays, as were Mr. and Mrs. Hardlucks', and both being of a generous nature, were seized with an insatiable desire to make on this anniversary of their nativity suitable gifts, each to the other, Hardluck has a watch, but no fob. Mrs. Hardluck has a wealth of hair, but no decorative comb for her hair. What is worse, finances are low, or rather exhausted. An idea strikes Hardluck. He will pawn his watch and buy a comb; thus surprising her. Mrs. Hardluck's mind is also illumined by a bright thought. She will sacrifice her hair, and with the money buy him a fob. This they do, of course, unknown to each other. Well, here's the situation: He had no fob for his watch, and she no comb for her hair; but now he has no watch for his fob, and she has no hair for her comb. Mack Sennett appears as an extra in this film produced by the Biograph Company.
Based on characters from Shakespeare's play: When Juliet's father refuses to let Romeo see her, Romeo resorts to extreme measures.
The Ranchman's Rival is a silent Western
An upper class drawing room. A gentleman breaks the curtain pole and goes in search of a replacement, but he stops into a pub first. He buys a very long pole, and causes havoc everywhere he passes, accumulating an ever-growing entourage chasing him, until he escapes them through a bit of movie magic, only to discover that the pole has already been replaced.
A disfigured violinist mistakes a token of appreciation for a love bouquet. When he realizes his mistake, he loses his mind.