Betty Shade Movies

Alice Lake made a fine comic foil for Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and several other comics at the Keystone studios. In spite of this, she wanted to be a serious actress. Ironically her dramatic work has pretty much been forgotten. This average drama has good performances by Lake and DeWitt Jennings and little else to recommend it. Although he is underage, Richard Everard (Jack Dougherty) runs off and weds chorus girl Mary Smith (Lake). His wealthy father (Jennings), who had forbidden the match, kidnaps his son and has him taken out to sea. He then tries to bribe Mary, and when she turns him down, he has the marriage annulled anyway. Mary is furious and goes back to her career on the stage. Richard finally makes it back to the city, and when he finds Mary in the company of a bunch of theater people they get in an argument and they split up for good. Mary is pregnant, however, and after she has the child, she searches for another line of work. Finally the senior Everard offers to take the little boy if she never comes near him again. Mary reluctantly agrees, but then she turns around and gets a job as her son's nursemaid. When the boy turns three, Everard Sr. has a change of heart and looks for Mary. Another woman tries to claim she is Richard's wife, but Mary puts a halt to the ruse. She reconciles with both Richard and his father. ~ Janiss Garza, Rovi

It was probably pretty simple for William C. DeMille to adapt this comedy stage hit to the screen -- he and his brother, director Cecil B. DeMille, were the playwrights. When his broker friend offers big returns, Ted Ewing (Edward Abeles) invests both his own money and that of his fiancée, Nora Heldreth (Betty Schade). But then the broker disappears and Ewing, believing that he has squandered his girl's money, takes out an insurance policy on himself and then sets out to get "accidentally" killed. Of course, nothing he tries works -- he falls in front of a train only to have it switch tracks on him, a fall from a window is broken by an awning, etc. Since members of a black hand society seem to be following him around, Ewing finally gets the idea of hiring them to murder him and gives the payment to Oki, his Japanese valet (Sessue Hayakawa). But then the broker returns and Ewing discovers that the money he invested has doubled. Now he has to figure out how to call off the black hand men, who have followed him and Nora to her aunt's cottage in Maine. Eventually a deal is worked out to everyone's satisfaction. ~ Janiss Garza, Rovi