Movies: William E. Shay

Telephone operator Kitty O'Brien can't help but get involved in the problems of her customers. Right now she is concerning herself with the well-being of Tom Blake, the honest son of crooked political boss Jim Blake....

The overthrow of Czar Nicholas II in Russia was such big news that the then-fledgling art of cinema couldn't help but jump on it immediately and create a couple of dramatizations....

A lost film. John Crawford, an honest mechanic, and Wilbur Robinson, a young man of leisure, both love the same girl. She marries Crawford and they have a baby. Crawford is engaged in perfecting an invention and money is short leaving the wife dissat...

Italian peasant girl deserts her fiancé for wealthy gangster and departs for America....

The daughter of King Neptune takes on human form to avenge the death of her young sister, who was caught in a fishing net. However, she falls in love with the king, the man she holds responsible....

A sultan agrees to help an evil witch destroy a mysterious beauty if the witch will bring his young son back to life....

Based on a character created by Louis Joseph Vance...

Grace Leonard, a typical woman of the New York stage, beautiful but old in sin, seduces William Craig, who becomes a thief in order to shower luxuries upon her. He is sentenced to prison and emerges five years later as a sad-faced, gray-haired man, e...

This picture is based on the same story that became D.W. Griffith's Orphans of the Storm in 1921. This version, made by the Fox Studios, stars famous "vamp" actress Theda Bara in the role that Lillian Gish later made famous...

Amos Bentley was up against it in more senses than one. Times were so hard with him that he had to part with the furniture of his little apartment in order to pay his debts. However, things were inclined to take a better turn for him. He was invited ...

Gennaro, the son of Lucretia Borgia, lives unaware of the identity of his mother, who has married the Duke of Ferrara. After Lucretia's brother is killed by five conspirators, the fathers of Gennaro's dearest friends, Lucretia tortures the old men to...

An elderly woman looks back on the special times in her life, thinking especially about her now-departed husband and the things they did together. Though it is sad that these times are now gone, she is comforted by her memories and by the hope of sha...

Tom Alkins, a sturdy fisherman, loves Polly Berry, the daughter of old Nat Berry, the keeper of the light. Bert Duncan also loves Polly and is insanely jealous of Tom. The course of true love runs smoothly for the happy couple with the exception of a...

Based on JS Le Fanu's 1850 poem "Shamus O'Brien." Copies of this short film survive at the Library of Congress and British Film Institute....

This was Theda Bara's third starring film, and the first which she carried all on her own, with no other name actors in the cast. Based on the Alexander Dumas story, The Clemenceau Case involves Iza, a vampire-wife (Bara), whose wicked ways scandaliz...

A young female boarding house tenant becomes an unwanted object of male attention....

Based -- loosely -- on Leo Tolstoy, this film starred feted stage star Nance O'Neil but is rather better remembered as Theda Bara's follow-up to the sensational A Fool There Was (1914)....

A story of an only daughter of a farmer; her mother is dead and she is her father's consolation. She grows up and falls in love with the young man in her father's employ, but when they tell the father of their love affair, he orders the lover off the...

George, a somewhat "unathletic" young man, falls for Clarice, a healthy, athletically inclined young woman. Unfortunately for George, however, a strapping, musclebound stud is also after Clarice, and she seems to prefer him to George. After reading a...

Leonard Dare, a producer, finds himself without a player strong enough to enact the part of Philip Dawany, one of the important characters of the cast. His company is temporarily dismissed and he returns home. Derwent Hall calls for an interview with...