Although not the first feature-length animated film, as is sometimes thought, it was the first cartoon to feature a character with an appealing personality. The appearance of a true character distinguished it from earlier animated "trick films", such as those of Blackton and Cohl, and makes it the predecessor to later popular cartoons such as those by Walt Disney. The film was also the first to be created using keyframe animation.
A hungry mosquito spots and follows a man on his way home. The mosquito slips into the room where the man is sleeping, and gets ready for a meal. His first attempts startle the man and wake him up, but the mosquito is very persistent.
A traveler stays the night at a rural inn, but gets no rest as he is tormented by various spectres and mysterious happenings.
Cartoon figures announce, via comic strip balloons, that they will move - and move they do, in a wildly exaggerated style. Also known as "Winsor McCay, the Famous Cartoonist of the N.Y. Herald and His Moving Comics".
A cartoonist draws faces and figures on a blackboard - and they come to life.
A one-armed street peddler notices that a well-to-do man has dropped his ring. He returns it to him. The wealthy man is very grateful and, to show his appreciation, takes the peddler to a 'Limb Store', where he buys him a new arm. The recipient soon discovers that this new arm has a will of its own - causing him considerable embarrassment.
Even though his widowed mother and sweetheart, Mary Putnam, disapprove, Worth Stuyvesant insists on going to West Point and becoming a soldier. Ultimately, Mary breaks off their engagement and Stuyvesant goes on a bender. His conduct is reported to the commander, who sends him to the sub post of Del Rio for 60 days of tour duty. There, Stuyvesant meets Lola Montez, an adventuress. With the help of a couple of her pals, Lola gets him drunk and marries him. But Stuyvesant lives up to his duties as a husband and surprisingly, Lola renounces her old ways and becomes a model wife.
A condensed silent film version of the Charles Dickens classic about the French Revolution and its subsequent Reign of Terror.
A smoker falls asleep, and two mischievious fairies play with his pipe. He discovers this, and imprisons them in a cigar box. He removes a flower from the box, which contains a fairy smoking a cigarette. Next, he leaves briefly while his smoking paraphenalia clears itself from the table and the flower reassembles itself into a cigar. He lights the cigar, then breaks a bottle containing the fairy, who interacts with him in various ways reeling from his cigar smoke, building a bonfire that he extinguishes, etc.
Well-meaning but accident-prone bakery employee Larry is involved in numerous slapstick mishaps on the job. After accidentally causing the bakery owner to fall into a vat of cake batter Larry finds his job in jeopardy, but he redeems himself by foiling a robbery planned by the bakery foreman.
Someone in India is deciphering secret codes and passing information from London's Downing Street to the natives, so Captain Robert Kent comes down from London to investigate. He disguises himself as a Rajah, and Colonel Wentworth introduces him to the colony.
The Roman setting provides ample opportunity for a very high concentration of gag titles, many of which are quite witty and many of which are quaint for deriving their humor from the juxtaposition of having ancient Romans use a lot of hip 1918-era slang. The whole thing is an excuse for a good send-up of how the Roman Empire has been depicted in "serious" plays, movies, &c.
This domestic comedy depicts a woman who stops her husband's gambling habit by having her cousin stage a fake police raid on the weekly poker game.
In the gray dawn of an October day, as the inhabitants of a village street in Tripoli are engaged in the enjoyment of their several pursuits of life, an Arab rushes upon the peaceful scene, announcing that Italy has declared war against Turkey and that the Italian warships are now in the harbor, shelling the city.
Robert Ware takes it upon himself to tame wild girl, Mag, to prove to his doubting friend Arnold, he can turn her into a graceful young lady. Later, when Arnold is in the war, he meets a pretty nurse who greatly impresses him. Back home he recalls the pleasant encounter to Robert, telling him of the gentle beauty he never forgot. Mag, now Margaret, overhears the story and reveals to Arnold, she was the nurse. The surprised Arnold now has to admit that Robert was right about gentling the little wild cat.
The Hollisters, a bright, spirited, wholesome family, are compelled to move into the country. After many efforts to secure a home, Shirley, eldest of the Hollisters, contrives a way out by renting a magnificent old stone barn at a ridiculously low price, transforming it into a house. The owner of the barn is not an ordinary landlord, as you will see, for he is a young man with fine ideals, and he is not content with establishing Shirley and her family in the quaintly beautiful old place, but makes the world a much happier place to live in for all of them.
In the poor Italian quarter of New York lives Luigi, an Italian peasant and inventor, who is so absorbed in his work that he greatly neglects his wife, Nedda. She is younger than he and fond of pleasure. Not understanding his neglect, she strongly resents it.
Jack Howard, through hard work, has at last placed himself in a comfortable position and finds himself with his dear little wife, Mabel, located in a little apartment with all the comforts of home. He is now ready to enjoy married life; the strain has been too great, however, and he is almost on the verge of nervous prostration, sick and irritable. Mabel tries to cheer and comfort him; she waits on him and is a truly good and faithful wife, very much concerned about her hubby. She insists he must take a vacation.
Lillian Travers, a New York heiress, pops down to Florida to surprise her fiancé, Fred Cassadene, the house doctor at a prominent Saint Augustine hotel. The surprise, however, is Lillian's when she finds Fred in a series of compromising situations with a certain wealthy widow staying there. When she can take no more, Lillian discovers a box forgotten at an old curiosity shop in which lies a hundred-year-old secret: a vial of four rare and exotic African seeds that promises to transform whoever swallows one from a woman to a man or vice versa.
Larry in school and always gets in trouble until he falls asleep and dreams of when he's all grown up.
