Luke runs a bunco booking agency.
Perla Quaranta, a half-starved "daughter of Little Italy," is given the place in Carlo Bruni's "Butterfly Act" that is vacated by a chorus girl who has become overweight. Although Perla becomes friendly with Krug, the wire-man, she rejects him as a suitor, and in revenge Krug causes Perla's wire to break.
Fernie Schmidt (Colleen Moore) lives with her parents in the rear of their delicatessen. The smells of the business - cheeses, sausages, garlic and pickled herrings - repulses Fernie, who dreams of leaving this environment and moving into a life that's more rarified. Her father, Pop Schmidt (Jean Hersholt) has plans for his daughter to marry Peter Halitovsky (Arthur Stone), a sausage salesman, but Fernie is repulsed by the idea. At a dance, Fernie meets Jack Dugan (Malcolm McGregor), who tells her that he is in stocks, a paper-counter, and she falls for him. Because of her rejection of her father's chosen candidate for matrimony, Pop puts Fernie out of the house.
A sympathetic showgirl assumes the guilt for her cousin who is cheating on her husband.
Helen Steele, who has theatrical aspirations, has been told by Sidney Parker that, owing to her lack of stage experience he cannot entertain her proposition of giving her the leading part in his new production, "The Siren." Believing that she can get Parker to consent if she is persuasive enough, Helen has her fiancé, Henry Tracey, invite the theatrical manager to the party to be given by John W. Cannell so that she may work upon him. At the affair Helen manages to obtain Parker's consent to give her a trial it she is successful in having Jack Craigen, a friend of Cannell, who has been living in Patagonia for a long time and who is a woman hater, propose to her.
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.
Lorenzo Carilo selects more-or-less menial jobs at which to make a living, other more "select" jobs not paying enough, and then he meets and falls in love with Vivian Forrester the daughter of a new-rich family. What's a poor boy to do? He might pose as a French Duke.
Suffering from aphasia after being conked on the head, a man is coerced into robbing his fiancée's home.
Harpo played the hero, a detective named Watson who "made his entrance in a high hat, sliding down a coal chute into the basement". Groucho played an "old movie" villain, who "sported a long moustache and was clad in black", while Chico was probably his "chuckling [Italian] henchman". Zeppo portrayed a playboy who was the owner of a nightclub in which most of the action took place, including "a cabaret, [which allowed] the inclusion of a dance number". The final shot showed Groucho "in ball and chain, trudging slowly off into the gloaming". Harpo, in a rare moment of romantic glory, gets the girl in the end. This film is lost.
First Pa said Theodore was a lizzy-nizzy. He let that go, but when Pa said he was too sporty because he spent a nickel for a ticket for a voting contest for the fairest girl in town, Pa's daughter, of course, then Theodore decided to settle Pa. He played at being a lady. Then Pa said he might not be as young as he used to be, but Ma came along. So Pa said all on the sly, "Go to it, Theodore."
A young woman goes to visit friends but mistakenly rings at the wrong address. She is greeted and taken in out of the storm by a handsome young man to whom she is immediately attracted. What she does not know, however, is that this young man has been fleeced by her father and has sworn vengeance against him.
A Playboy inherits a Western ranch on the condition that he shall run it properly for 6 months. A villain makes an attempt to distract him from reaching the goal, but he, no longer the wastrel of yore, persists and becomes full owner of the property.
Peter Drake meets and falls in love with Jackie Swazey, the daughter of a feisty suffragette and incipient politician. In order to impress her, he agrees to help Mrs Swazey in her campaign to become elected.
In his will, Mr. Baird leaves his son Arnold just one seven-passenger auto and a hundred dollars to keep it filled up and in good repair. When James Bennett hears of this, he insists that Baird do something to make his fortune before he can marry his daughter Ruth. Bennett begins by using the car to start a jitney-bus line. This is not terribly impressive to Bennett -- who owns a trolley company -- and he decides he would rather see Ruth married to his controller, William Mott-Smith.
A band of crooks, headed by Harry Gribbon, are on a train when they learn of a telegram sent to a fellow passenger, who is a police commissioner. The wire identifies him as official collector for the Old Cops' Home. A little chloroform does for him and when the train pulls out of his destination he is still on board while Gribbon is posing as the commissioner-collector.
Hearts and Sparks is a 1916 American silent comedy film directed by Charles Parrott (Charley Chase) and starring Gloria Swanson. When Mack Sennett first saw Gloria Swanson, he felt that she would be right as a romantic lead for Bobby Vernon because they were both small in stature. This was their first film together and they proved to be a big hit with the public.
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.
According to Richard Standhope's will, both his daughter Laura and her long-lost twin brother Larry must be reunited by a certain date, or the estate will revert to her avaricious guardian, Andrew Brean. Following Standhope's death, Laura and her sweetheart, Jim Watson, read in her deceased mother's diary that Andrew had broken up the Standhopes' marriage soon after the twins' birth by unjustly accusing Mrs. Standhope of infidelity. Laura was then sent to boarding school, while little Larry, placed in his father's care, was neglected and later became a thief. As Laura and Jim ponder Larry's whereabouts, the house is robbed by none other than Larry, now called "the Kid," and his cohort, "the Snail."
Muggsy Mulane, a waif who wears boy's clothing, jumps a freight train to the country after Jimmy "the Eel," the leader of the gang of crooks with whom she works, is arrested. In the village of Cottonville, Muggsy befriends Aunt Sarah, whom she later discovers is Jimmy's mother. When Muggsy learns that the greedy Judge Cotton, who holds the mortgage on Aunt Sarah's property, is planning to foreclose, she threatens to blackmail him, and he relents.
A New York fur saleswoman falls for a man she meets on the subway and must decide if she wants to accept a much dreamed for work transfer to Paris, or stay and get married.