The earliest surviving film featuring Lon Chaney in a major role, By the Sun's Ray's was but one of several 2-reel westerns starring the florid Murdock MacQuarrie. MacQuarrie plays a detective investigating a series of gold shipment robberies. Along the way, he falls for a mine superintendent's pretty daughter (Agnes Vernon), much to the dismay of a sullen mine office clerk (Chaney), who is also smitten with the girl...
The Chief's son, Silver Water, returns from college and is met at the station by the tribe. The Indians make merry to celebrate his homecoming. Hal Benton, an easterner, rides on to ask his way to the hotel, where he is stopping with some friends, among them his fiancée, Veda Mead, and her father. Knowing that the Indian ceremonies will interest his friends, Hal obtains permission to come the next day and bring his friends. The Chief calls Morning Star, an Indian maiden, telling his son that she is to be his squaw. Silver Water is pleased with her. The next day Hal Benton and his friends arrive. While the others inspect the camp, Veda Mead amuses herself with Silver Water and ere long is thoroughly infatuated with him, while the Indian's vanity is touched by the attentions of the society coquette, and he promises to meet her the next day. Their little tete-a-tete is cut short by the entrance of Morning Star.
The poor man, professing love for his family, drinks what he presumes to be poison in order to make a thousand dollars for them, but the drink proves to be harmless.
Jacques watched through an opening in the foliage and saw Gilbert of the mounted police and his own wife exchange pleasant greetings. From that moment he hated the police officer. Gilbert was too fine-looking.
Lillian is an unfortunate woman. After leaving her baby at the door of a hospital she meets David, the author of her misfortune. It is a case of starvation or the "easiest way." She chooses the "easiest way." After eighteen years she again shows up, a social outcast and a tool for David's black profession.
In order to get a job as a cook on a ranch, a young girl disguises herself as a boy. Problems arise when several of the young women at the ranch fall in love with "him".
The husband and his wife live alone in the mountains, where he is working out a claim. A stranger from a distant mine is injured in the vicinity. The husband nurses him back to health. During his convalescence the stranger persuades the wife to elope with him.
Violet De Ray opens up a barber shop at Roaring Gulch. Violet not only does a ripping good business, but she unconsciously has a hand in hurrying along several matrimonial affairs which have hung fire. This is notably the case with Si, who has loved bashfully and at a respectable distance for years. He is lured into Violet's shop, and after his chin whiskers have been clipped he emerges elated; and this coupled with Mandy's desire to protect him from such evil influences, cements a long drawn out romance.
Dr. Frank Rosslyn, known to the world as a prominent physician, is in reality the head of a quack medical concern which dispenses patent medicines and advertises extensively.
The wife takes with her their small daughter, leaving the son to the care of the father. The forlorn woman wanders into a fishing village, and is taken into a kindly fisherman's family. To more surely separate herself from the world that knows her. She assumes her maiden name. Many years afterward the father and the son, now grown, pass through the village. The son becomes acquainted with his own sister, knowing nothing of the relationship, and falls in love with her. He persuades his father to spend his season at a summer resort nearby. Later, the son and the daughter are secretly married. The girl leaves a note for her mother, telling her of the act. The mother follows to the parsonage, and then the summer resort, where she overtakes the couple.
On her deathbed, Renee's mother confides to her daughter the troubled history of her life. She was wealthy and she was loved alone for her riches. She was to be married; on her wedding day the bridegroom married another woman he really loved. She married her second choice of men and after two years, he left her.
A cartoon from Pat Sullivan featuring Charley Chaplin.
Wallace's mother is the faded rose, his wife the pink rose and his mistress the red rose.
Dorothy is a city girl who has chosen to teach school in the backwoods. Pierre is a product of the backwoods, a man who will allow no one to cross him in the most trivial matter, a man in whom the baser elements of character are predominant.
The Trombone family is very musically inclined, but their neighbours, the painter Pierre van Hall and his wife, are being driven crazy. This turns into a fight between the neighbours that gets way out of hand, because their reactions to each other become increasingly extreme; at one point a brass band is even used. The police ultimately force the quarrelling neighbours to make peace, by threatening them with jail.
Thus far Sophie has failed completely as a motion picture actress. She has spoiled every scene, but through the general manager she is to be given one more chance. She is sent to the border to act in Mexican war pictures.
A young mountaineer loves Dorothy, daughter of a backwoodsman. An artist comes into the district to paint and falls in love with Lucille, Dorothy's sister. Dorothy is interested in the artist on account of her sister's love for him, and she poses.
Dorothy and her father have staked all their hopes on their mine. While they are awaiting the arrival of Mr. Reid, who is to report on the value of the mine, Pedro, a Mexican, makes familiar advances to Dorothy and is sternly repulsed. Reid arrives and a mutual attraction springs up between himself and Dorothy, to the chagrin of Pedro.
An old arrowmaker's daughter, while at the stream, meets a brave from another tribe. They become enamored of each other in the sudden positive way of the savage, and agree to meet at sunset. The chief of the tribe to which the girl belongs, covets and demands her of her father. The father consents, but the girl rebels. At sunset, she meets her lover and tells him what her fate is to be. He tells her that when the moon shines, he will come for her and take her away.
This is a story of the love of two brothers for the same girl.
