Parson Davies

The Dawn of Understanding is a lost 1918 American silent Western comedy film produced by The Vitagraph Company of America and directed by David Smith. It stars Bessie Love in the first film of her nine-film contract with Vitagraph.
1918-12-02
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0.0Returning to his father's cattle ranch after the excitement of serving in combat overseas, Bud McGraw becomes restless, and his father decides to send him to an old friend who commands the Border Police in Texas. On the way he meets Peggy Hughes, accompanying her Uncle Graham, a customs inspector, and he retrieves her hat from the rails of a train. At the headquarters, numerous scrapes and fights win him the admiration of, and friendship with, the men. Lazaro, a Secret Service agent, invites Mrs. Graham and Peggy, who are staying at the border station, for an automobile ride, and they are captured by bandits and held for ransom. Bud and his pals deliver the ransom and discover that Lazaro is the bandit chief. Lazaro refuses to release Peggy, but a jealous rival, Nita de Garma, causes his downfall and shoots him as the Border Police arrive to rescue the party.
0.0William Lowry rescues Claudia Royce from a burning building, and upon hearing that her parents are trying to force her to accept millionaire Leland, whom she does not love, he proposes a marriage of convenience to himself. She accepts, and Bill arranges a fake ceremony; but when she falls in love with Davidge, Bill refuses her a "divorce." Later, Bill gets rich in the manufacture of a patented fireman's pole, and when he buys a house for Claudia she realizes her love for him and they are legally married.
4.8Doctor Zorba and his followers plan to bring Dracula back to life using electronic means, using blood from victims. Batman saves Marita Banzon and defeats Dracula's creators.
0.0Gold miner Edd Denmeade loves Lucy Watson, the sister of the official mining claim recorder. Denmeade suspects Watson of killing his father, who after a poker game was shot by a gambler "who shuffles with one hand." The real murderer, Sam Spralls, has convinced Watson that he killed Denmeade and threatens to expose him unless Watson assigns him all the gold claims. Spralls assembles a band of killers to jump the claims when Watson complies. Eventually, Denmeade learns the identity of the killer when he sees Spralls shuffle a deck of cards. He forms a vigilante party and rids the community of Spralls and his gang.
0.0When a secretary overhears her boss disparaging her looks, she decides to show him how wrong he is.
0.015 chapter serial. Gideon Trask and his henchmen at the saloon in Arkansas City covet the mineral survey of the Louisiana Territory made for Napoleon before the sale of the Territory to the United States. This is in possession of the Heath Brothers, who seek to use it in staking their land when the Oklahoma territory, last of the Louisiana tract to be released by the Government, is opened to Homesteaders.
0.0Owner of a fashionable gambling den John De Forrest seeks out wealthy people and lures them to his gambling den with the help of Lil, a beautiful but heartless blonde once there they trick the moneyed suckers into losing their fortunes. When the joint is raided and a policeman accidently killed the pair take it on the lam and head towards very different destinies.
The film focused on a young black man who joins the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and becomes a hero by rescuing a captive mixed-race woman from a hostile American Indian tribe. The young man later purchases a ranch that becomes the foundation for great financial wealth.
0.0Mary Sundale is a young woman who spurns her childhood sweetheart to attach herself to a large group of riotous, semi-artistic young people and becomes infatuated with a superficial poet and critic. One night this poet becomes too bold in his advances and is thrashed by the man who has been rejected. On a later night, the group holds a party in a dirigible. The ship crashes and fear grips the revelers. Mary, now disgusted with the group and all it represents, mends her manner of living and plans a future with the man who has always sincerely loved her. A lost film.
0.0When Harlan Carr inherited his Uncle Ebenezer's "Jack-O Lantern" house and too his bride there to live, he found himself the unwilling host of a score of hungry relatives within a week. Soon, strange things began to happen. A black cat made the house his headquarters, unexplained sounds could be heard and a shadowy figure floated through the halls at night.
The lovely and wealthy Gladys Barnes is pursued by many young men though she favors the persistent Earle. Her head is turned when her father tells her a foreign Count has written with the request to marry her. An amateur artist Gladys paints a portrait of the Count from a photo but the young men at the studio first tease her and then decide to play a joke on her and her father. Sending a telegram that he is arriving early they all dress as different versions of the Count and comic complications ensue until Gladys realizes her folly and returns to Earle.
0.0A young woman borrows money from her boss for her wedding dress. After the marriage he asks to be repaid, and she--not liking to ask her husband for money--writes a check on her husband's account. When he discovers that his wife has written a check to another man and not told him, complications ensue.
0.0Because 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.
0.0A young man's journey into adulthood, love, and ambition, inspired by a serial by George Randolph Chester exploring themes of love, ambition, and self-discovery, set against the backdrop of the Roaring Twenties.
Indiana Stillwater, the daughter of a wealthy American railroad industrialist, marries English nobleman Viscount Canning and travels to England. Her in-laws are somewhat shocked by her casualness in dress and manner, but welcome her into the family anyway. When her parents invite her to a Sunday-night dinner at their hotel, however, her husband--believing it to be inappropriate behavior for the wife of a nobleman--orders her not to go. Complications ensue.
0.0Wealthy heiress Clover Dean has three suitors: Duke Boris, promoted by her aunt, Bucky Raine, a wealthy idler sponsored by her uncle, and struggling young doctor William Dunn, who is her own choice. Clover's engagement to the duke is to be announced at a dance, but she rebels before the gathering and refuses to go on with the marriage. Clover leaves hurriedly, a shot is heard and the duke found dead. Bucky Raine, discovered wandering about the garden with a revolver in his hand, is arrested for the crime, but his testimony convicts the doctor as the person who had possession of the gun during the shooting. The doctor and Clover are both arrested for suspicion, but a guilty conscience forces Rita, a former sweetheart of the duke to confess to the crime. Clover then has her own way and marries the doctor.
0.0Homesteaders battle a cattle baron, who is trying to drive them off the lands they have settled on so his cattle will be able to graze on it.
0.0In an early California settlement, Juanita, a dance hall queen of Castilian ancestry, knifes her lover, Jim Brandt, the dance hall owner, when she catches him embracing a new dancer.
Amy Lindel, a church choir singer, goes to the city to pursue a singing career, but finds herself only able to get cabaret gigs. She then becomes entangled in a situation involving stolen diamonds, and is saved by the "good guy" whom she later marries.