Marion Leonard

A nostalgic look at film clips from the Silent era.

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A little girl and her father are among the settlers in a small western town. The father is very friendly with the neighboring Indian tribe and is presented with a quaint piece of metal representing a dragon's claw, the tribe's good luck omen. Some time later, while traveling with his daughter, he is held up by a band of bandits and shot dead. A bandit takes from him this dragon's claw. Years pass. The little girl has grown into a beautiful young lady. She marries. Their love is very real and their life most happy. He decides to go out west to see a mine that yields the richest gold and his wife expresses a desire to go along with him. The mine is christened "The Dragon's Claw," because of an Indian charm the man owns. While out on a western desert, he shows the dragon's claw to his wife. She then recognizes it as the kind her father possessed when he was killed. She has understood it to be the only one of its kind. She now believes it is her husband who killed her father.

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The husband of the young woman is shot by a rejected suitor and she is left with an infant boy, who is to be spared until he reaches man's estate. Standing over the dead body of her husband she vows vengeance.

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John Evans and Thomas Barnes were both employed by the banking house of H.M. Cruze and Co. They also occupied an apartment together. Barnes received a tip to play C. and S. stock for a rise. But instead of rising it fell, and he was notified by his broker to send five hundred dollars the next morning to cover the margin or be wiped out. He had no money of his own left, and waiting until everyone had left the office, Barnes opened the safe and took out five hundred dollars.

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A young girl is a talented violinist, and wins a scholarship in a school of music. In the village is a banker who is a deacon of a church of whom everybody is afraid. He convinces the father of the girl that music is leading her astray, and declares that the only way to save her is to make her his wife. The father falls dead at the wedding. A year later a child is born. The young wife leads a life of sorrow and abuse. The husband takes her violin away from her and refuses her girl friends permission to come and see her. When she rebels, he drives her out of the house. She goes to the city and makes a name for herself as a musician. Her husband, chagrined at her success, tries to worry her. He sends a box of crepe intimating that their baby is dead.

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A girl marries a wealthy pawnbroker in order to get money for her poor lover, who is an artist. When the pawnbroker dies, his son forces the girl to marry him, but he is killed and she marries the artist. Various problems arise after their marriage, but eventually they are happy together.

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Beatrice, an artist in the city, goes to a fishing village to find inspiration for her paintings. She meets a young fisherman and, to ensure he continues posing for her, leads him to believe she is falling in love with him. He becomes devoted to her, leaving his heartbroken sweetheart in the village. As the painting nears completion, Beatrice invites the fisherman to accompany her to the city. In the city, the fisherman realizes she has a fiancé and that she was merely using him for her art.

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The story opens with Miss Leonard, now a woman past the prime of life, relating the sad, romantic story of her life to her dearest niece, who is engaged to be married. As in a vision, the story shifts back forty years and discloses the interior of an orphan asylum. Three babies are there, two boy babies and one baby girl, awaiting adoption into a good home. Years pass and the orphaned children have grown up in three different homes. Miss Leonard's dearest treasures are a pair of tiny baby shoes and a faded plaid shawl given to her foster parents by the asylum nurse.

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The story opens in a New York tenement where Miss Leonard is living in hopes of finding the means to support herself and little baby. A month before her husband had been killed in a mine accident and Miss Leonard sought the city, leaving her child m the care of a neighbor. She is aroused by a knock on the door. A youth of the underworld, struck with her beauty, has followed her home. He tells her where she can secure work. When he offers her money to pay for a new dress, she understands, and drives him from the room. Another knock. It is her landlord. She must pay her rent in the morning. Her eye falls on the card left by the "cadet." and makes a desperate decision that will change her life.

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The girl decided after what happened at the garden party that she did not want his love any longer, but could not live without it. She decided to leave this world. Her unexpected caller had something to say about that. He did not have to read "Sarah Hardcrab's Advice to the Lovelorn" to know what to do. Being a very human and sensible person, he brought two young people together in his own original way.

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A story of reconciliation and redemption. In a dramatic stage performance, a successful actress is watched by her estranged father. After her performance, they are finally reunited, marking the "ending" of their long journey of separation.

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A woman realizes that her son is following the same path of corruption pursued by her father, a Civil War traitor, and her husband, an embezzler.

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When an casual comment about a straying friend leads to despair a woman finds grief returning to her door in kind.

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A 1913 short directed by Stanner E.V Taylor and starring Marion Leonard.

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Sarah Leeson, a servant who hides a confession on her deathbed at Porthgenna Tower regarding the true, illegitimate parentage of her child, Rosamond. Rosamond is raised as the legitimate daughter of Mrs. Treverton but is the daughter of Sarah Leeson and a local miner. Years later, a grown-up Rosamond marries the blind owner of the tower, Leonard Frankland. Sarah, having previously served as a nurse, warns Rosamond to avoid the room containing the hidden confession. Rosamond discovers the paper, revealing her true parentage and illegitimacy to herself and her husband, who decides to reject the inheritance.

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Mrs. Despard, a butterfly of society, finding herself widowed and without means, sends her little daughter Lena, to live with fisher folk in a seacoast town, while she seeks ways and means to continue the life of luxury and ease she has become accustomed to. With the aid of a young adventuress, she conducts a gambling house for the sons of the wealthy, and prosperity smiles upon her until her partner after a severe quarrel leaves her. Unfortunately, the partner, young and attractive, starts a rival gambling house and the scions of the wealthy soon become conspicuous by their absence. Desperate, the widow seeks other means of attracting the men, and lighting upon a letter and photograph of her daughter, decides upon bringing her to the city and make her the magnet that will draw the trade to the gambling tables.

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A newspaper woman buys a statuette from an Italian peddler and is given her change in counterfeit bills. Throught the peddler, she tracks down the counterfeiters.

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Marion Leonard has suffered the title situation and spends just over 10 minutes trying to find him.

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The little Mexican girl was in love with the American engineer, but the Mexican who loved her was vindictive and vain and so attempted to force his dagger into her throat. Her cries were heard by an American tourist, who at once came to her assistance and forced the Mexican from the shack. He disappeared quickly and the girl never saw her benefactor. Sometime later she and her American husband returned to the east. He had succeeded, comparatively, but he soon took to gambling in stocks; One day he informed his wife that his speculations were wiped out, and even his house may have to be sold to meet his creditor's demand. The husband then noticed a newspaper item. "James Burden, the Multi-Millionaire, interested in Charity." Then the idea came; it was daring, it was wrong, and he knew it: but he was desperate. He would call on the millionaire, ask for a contribution, and then copy his signature and forge a check.

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The leader of the band loved the little tambourine player, but she loved the first violin. The first violin loved her. The leader of the band was in a position to bully both the first violin and the little tambourine, and what's more, he did. But their love was strong.

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Marion Leonard plays a young woman struggling to earn a livelihood by writing stories. The plot takes the path of looking at that phase of modern literary life.

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Her husband was just what she was not, cold and brutal and even a little criminal. He earned his living in God knows what way, but once he boldly boasted that he and a confederate was to rob a house. She pleaded with him to forsake the dishonest plan, but he laughed and hurled her aside. She sobbed and begged, but he merely enjoyed her tears, and left the house. Outside he met his accomplice. The little wife followed him, caught up with him on the corner, and again pleaded with him to return home. In his rage he turned and struck her on the head. The woman fell and did not rise again. The two ran off. A little later she was found lying there by a farmer and his wife, who revived her. She did not know who or what she was. Her memory was a complete blank.

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When the actress learned that if she married the man his father would disinherit him, she was rather determined for his sake not to marry him. When his father, at the point of death, suddenly had a will drawn up leaving everything to his wife, and then commissioned his attorney to go out and find a woman who would marry him, it was she whom he met and to whom he broached the daring offer. And she accepted. When she learned that she had married the father of the man she loved, and that she had everything and he nothing; they arranged a plan of their own whereby the fortune would be more equally distributed.

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A girl champions the cause of the strikers at a mill.

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A pretty woman's tears are the greatest persuasive argument on the planet earth. A woman's tears will melt the coldest heart, and will make the heart manifest itself when there isn't any at all. They were in love, and pa frowned on the romance. When a pa frowns on a romance between a pretty, determined girl and the man "she was born to marry" there's always an interesting story. The girl knew the power of tears, because she was a girl! And she determined to cry her father into submission.

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The princess was an earnest, down-to-earth girl who despised royal pomp and embodied the struggles of common humanity. Yet, she was condemned to a political marriage with a lifeless aristocrat whose extreme "blue blood" guaranteed her nothing but misery.

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With the frozen desert all about them, under the chill northern skies, a vast stretch of somber gray, they plighted their troth. He had left the wilderness of mortar and steel with its lights and sights and tears and sneers to come to this land of night, with its cold and gold, to cut through the white for the yellow beneath. And the girl, brave in her hope that his would be realized, had come with him. His goal was gold; and he took the trail. For days he searched it, and found only despair, then broke his leg. An old Indian found him, alone and suffering, and took him to his hut. For days he nursed the injured limb, and for weeks the wanderer loitered in the camp of the Indian. Never a word reached the girl. Then she received a letter from home, advising her that she had inherited a large fortune.

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Marion Leonard is the teacher of a group of children of the tenements. She loved them, loved them with a mother-love and a sister-love, and the warm love of suffering humankind.

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A doctor moves to the city, and stops writing to his sweetheart back home. She decides to go to the city to find him.

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She was tired of her plain dresses. So that night she told her husband of the desire that was to be the disaster. And so the next day at the office the guilty pen left a balance in the figures, and the sin was concealed under the silks it bought. The woman was happy. His act was discovered, and he was taken away to jail. The wife went to the judge with her woman's tears and a weeping plea, but in the stern eyes of earth's law sentiment is no extenuation. So the barred gates of hope closed behind him, and on the four stone walls he saw the handwriting and read its message. The years went by, and one day a woman older than her birthdays sat in the twilight, and peering into the gloom saw her heart reflected.

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Peeved and piqued, she sat in fretful mood before the fireplace. Perhaps in the fleeting flames she saw the lights and sights of the ballroom. She chided herself for having married a man who was wedded to his professional duties. Of course, she admitted to herself, the hospital required her husband's duties. The brilliance of the ballroom beckoned with boisterous invitation to her yielding thoughts. She put the baby girl to sleep, and went to the ball alone. The lights were bright, the people were merry and she was happy. But at home a great record was writing itself on the walls, writing mother's negligence in writhing flames. The fire in the hearth, left to its own mischievous irresponsibility, had set the house ablaze.

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Discouraged and disheartened with her uncompromising poverty and the narrow prospects for improving the bleak conditions, she goes away with another. It was hard to leave the little tot and the husband vainly straggling against the relentless tide of invincible circumstance. In the lonesome night the child prays for the mother-woman, and across the dreary waste of desert life she hears the call, and heeds. The telepathic tie that binds the child's mind to her own transmits the wistful message, and the mother-heart conquers. The nebulous shadow of night and blight departs; the withered hope buds and blooms anew, and she takes the narrow path back to those to whom her life is consecrated.

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Bessie Trenton grieves over the fact that her brother is neglecting the support of his wife and children. At last she determines to obtain a position for him in the office where she is cashier. One day her brother steals some money. The girl notes the missing money, and the disappearance of her brother points to his guilt. She returns home at once. Her employer returns to the office, sees the open safe, the missing money, and at once suspects the absent cashier as guilty of the theft. He calls at the house, just in time to see her with the money in her hands, which she had been given by her brother, and announces herself as the guilty person. The detectives find a man's watch fob, just in front of the safe. The clue is followed, and at last the guilt of the brother is fastened upon him. Bessie is liberated, and thenceforth she appoints herself as the breadwinner of her guilty brother's family.

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How the accident happened no one could explain, but the lamp had exploded, and the girl was blind! She thought of and sent for Bob. He came. Sadly she told him what had happened, and horror-stricken, he recoiled from her. And that moment he decided to go away. When he told her he was going west, that he would soon return to her, she clung to him. He comforted her with deceit, and went out of the house, putting her out of his life.

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John Potter volunteers to serve the South and, disguised as a Union soldier, John starts on his mission of securing the Union forces' plans. As he steals through the Union lines he comes upon a squad of Union soldiers, and in their midst a Confederate spy. A sharp order and from the barrels of twelve guns the prisoner's punishment is meted out to him. Like a blow it dawns upon John that, if detected, that would be his fate. His courage fails him and he turns toward the Confederate lines. He runs to his home, and bursts in upon his sister, who alone is awake. A few brief words and she knows all. The boy, desperate in his shame, runs into another room; there is a muffled shot, a thin wreath of smoke tells its grim tale. She determines to accomplish her brother's mission, and flies out into the night.

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To save her artist lover from starvation, a young girl weds a rich old man, who buys his pictures. Not knowing her sacrifice, the artist becomes famous and publicly snubs the girl. On his deathbed the old man sends for the artist and divulges how he forced the girl to marry him and the lovers are reconciled.

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Quite harmless in themselves, but when Mrs. Ronald G. Saunders saw her faithless lord purchasing the innocent blossoms, she was for a divorce right away. Henceforth she would devote her life to charity. The fond one on whom the flowers were bestowed cast them forth. In her pursuit of uplifting the lowly, Mrs. Saunders found them, and the monster husband was at once transformed into a dear, kind, good one.

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