Edwin August

Some tramps assault the telegraph office trying to rob $2000 delivered by train. The telegraphist girl, trying to help, telegraphs the next station and then the men are captured. (imdb)

Joe, "The Bad Man of San Fernand," is one tough customer. He sets his sights on a lovely young lady who spurns his advances and elopes with a fresh-faced young cowpoke. An angry Joe eventually gets his revenge.

Enrico, a poor street singer, forsakes his sweetheart, Veronica, when he meets a fashionably-dressed young woman. A rich couple takes pity on the shabbily-dressed Veronica, and buys her a new gown. At a dance, Enrico sees Veronica in her new dress and tries to win her back. (imdb)

A son leaves to seek his fortune in the city. Many years later he returns and checks into his parents' inn. They don't recognize him, but noticing his fat wallet, plan to rob him. (imdb)

A royal woman rejects her arranged marriage. The cardinal hatches a plan: the suitor will shave and change clothes. He arranges with 4 clowns to stage an attack on the princess which he easily repels. It works; the princess falls for him, especially when the cardinal arranges his arrest. (imdb)

Two miners are fighting over a woman, and one is about to murder the other in his sleep. At the critical moment, the woman introduces her fiancé from the city. (imdb)

All the young men in the mining camp flirt with Lucy. Bud, the youngest of them, doesn't stand a chance. At a dance, Bud dresses as a woman and all the men flirt with him and abandon Lucy. When his disguise is revealed, the other men are too embarrassed to approach Lucy, and Bud dances the rest of the night with her. (imdb)

William promises to marry his sweetheart, Mary, after completing medical school. William's father has saved enough money to set up William's medical practice. However, Mary's alcoholic father discovers the savings and steals it. (imdb)

As they have breakfast in their hunting lodge Howard jokingly tells his wife to improve her coffee or he'll shoot her. Later she meets him as he's out hunting and is accidentally shot and killed by another hunter. Because the maid overheard his joke at breakfast Howard is arrested for her murder. (imdb)

Schoolteacher Edith breaks off her engagement after an argument with her fiancé. She writes him a note of reconciliation but throws it away. Without her knowledge, one of her students fishes it out of the trash and sends it to her fiancé. Later, Edith is alone grading papers when a man bursts in and threatens her. (imdb)

A brother and sister decide to play pirates with a real boat. It becomes untied from the dock and drifts away with the kids in it. Soon it starts to sink. Their father hires a motor boat to rescue them before it's too late. (imdb)

A farmer takes in a young orphan after her mother's death and sends her off to school. After she's grown, he encourages her to consider his younger brother as a husband. When the younger brother proves to be a coward, she chooses the older brother instead. (imdb)

An attractive young woman is ashamed of her shabbily-dressed mother, and won't introduce her to her suitor. Distraught, the mother wanders into the street and is killed. Too late, the daughter realizes how badly she treated her. (imdb)

A man loses his business and his fiancée, and drifts into the saloons. There he meets a similarly-downtrodden young woman. She works behind the scenes to help him recover his life, and eventually he realizes how steadfast she is. (imdb)

A businessman neglects his wife, who is tricked into believing he is having an affair. She packs to leave him, but is distracted by their little girl, and can't bear to go. (imdb)

John and Mary divorce their spouses to marry each other. Mary dies after giving birth and the baby is taken in by John's first wife, Martha. She refuses all contact with John until many years later when he becomes ill and she finally forgives him for deserting her. (imdb)

A beloved old man is fired by a new manager who wants to give the bookkeeping job to his friend. Trying to contact his employer, who doesn't know about the firing, the old man foils a robbery at his employer's house. (imdb)

An aristocrat is delighted when a nobleman asks for his sister's hand in marriage. But delight turns to shock when he discovers that the engaged couple are already lovers. He kills the nobleman in a duel, watches his sister die of grief, and then poisons himself. (imdb)

Griffith intercuts between the lives of two couples married on the same day. One couple is rich, the other is poor. Time passes, and in desperation over joblessness, the poor husband attempts to burgle a home, only to be captured a gunpoint by the mistress of the house. It is the home of the rich couple. While holding the poor intruder at gunpoint, the rich wife accidently discovers evidence implicating her own husband in a bribery scheme . . . (imdb)

A young woman's peaceful existence is shattered when she is abducted by the crew of a boat of smugglers, who then also turn against their captain. (imdb)

Two sons named John (one from a Union family and one from a Confederate family) go off to war leaving behind their mothers and fiancées. Their respective foraging parties encounter each other and exchange fire, and the Union party runs into the woods near the home of the Confederate John. (imdb comments)

Vitagraph short about a farmer's daughter who works her butt off and never really gets anything out of it. She dreams of one day going to college and finally gets her shot but something bad happens on the farm, which might cause her to stay home. (imdb comments)

Another D.W. Griffith film with a criminal invading an otherwise unrelated situation; this time, the interest is heightened as August's cowardice does play well against the danger offered by convict Paget. (imdb)

Seemingly every man is in love with Gladys (played by Mabel Normand). Wherever she goes, man start following her with much enthusiasm. Two men at the place her father works want to marry her...both send her letters asking for such. She accepts both! Her father finds out and decides to play a trick on her. (imdb)

A Husband thinks the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. His wife shows him its not.

In the Kentucky backwoods, Dorothy West helps her moonshiner father take some jugs to his still; along the way, she meets dashing Edwin August. Ms. West and Mr. August are immediately attracted to each other but he is "The Revenue Man", which means trouble for the moonshiners. After August begins arresting the bootleggers, citizens dependent on the alcohol trade take up arms against the man. Even West wields a rifle; when a loved one is shot, she wants to hunt down, and kill, revenue man.

D.W. Griffith's Biograph short The Schoolteacher and the Waif (1912) can be seen as foundational in terms of this storyline. Nora, the waif, played by Mary Pickford, is forced to attend school--she is actually dragged through the dirt kicking and screaming--by local officials. She warms to her teacher for the way that he defends her against the taunts of some other students, but subsequently rejects him when she has to wear a dunce cap during a spelling bee.

A Canadian lumberjack nostalgically recalls his past as he listens to a record of the song his sweetheart used to sing him - "Annie Laurie". The singer of the record travels to Western Canada for her health, making a stop at Golden, and the lumberjack saves her from being robbed by two crooks. He then discovers that she is the old sweetheart and she sits down to sing the old song for him. (Library and Archives Canada.)

A young man who visits a shady bar and gets involved with the criminals there, by a misunderstanding becomes a murder suspect. An older man who regrets his own life choices is willing to sacrifice himself to give the boy a chance, but the real culprit is caught. The young man promises to improve his life.

Julian loves his cousin and foster sister Camilla, who is wooed and won by Lionel, his friend and rival. He is a witness to their marriage and after the ceremony he departs heartbroken to his own house. Utopian was the existence of Lionel and Camilla, until some time later Camilla is seized with a serious illness, and Lionel's grief knew no bounds when he heard "That low knell tolling his lady dead." (imdb)

A social comedy in which the young Dick Evans is seen as a failure, and then tries to prove himself to his father and father-in-law as an editor.

For reasons of state, the first-born, a baby girl, is sent away and placed in the care of Gretchen, a trusted peasant woman, who is the widowed mother of a little child about the same age. The two children grow up as sisters. Later, upon her deathbed, the noble lady repents and sends for her child to reinstate her. Gretchen takes this opportunity to make a great lady of her own daughter Lena, the goose girl, by sending her to court instead of the real heiress.