The Profligate
1916-05-11 · 21 min · Not rated
Young lawyer Richard Potter and Irene Roberts are secretly engaged but Irene’s social climbing mother wants her to marry a wealthy man. To that end she schemes with banker David Winters to break up Richard and Irene and pair her with Winters profligate son Gerald Winters. They succeed temporarily but Gerald is a violent drunk who runs with a fast crowd and eventually ends up charged with murder. Though innocent Gerald has been well framed and faces the gallows until Irene appeals to Richard, now the District Attorney, for aid. At the eleventh hour a confession saves Richard, allowing Richard and Irene to reunite.
Trailers are previews, not full movies.
No authorized playback source configured. Use the legal watch options below.
Production details
- Directors
- Tom Ricketts
- Production companies
- American Film Manufacturing Company
- Countries
- United States of America
- Status
- Released
Top Cast
Edward CoxenRichard Potter
Winifred GreenwoodIrene Roberts
George FieldGerald Winters
Louise LesterMrs. Roberts
George WebbSam MurdockTitle information and images are supplied by TMDb. Explore our discovery guide for advice on comparing metadata and legal viewing options.
Where to watch
Availability provided by JustWatch via TMDb. Offers can change. Provider links are listed on TMDb; full playback requires a separately authorized source.
Availability not listed for this country.
Seasons & episodes
Recommendations

Carla Zachanassian had a child by Serge Miller as a teenager. When Serge refused to marry her, she was driven out of town. By her own wit and cunning, she has returned as a multi-millionaire for a visit. The town lays out the red carpet expecting big things from Carla, only to learn that her sole purpose is to see Serge Miller killed...

Jamie Fitzpatrick and Nona Alberts are two women from opposites sides of the social and economic track, but they have one thing in common: a mission to fix their community's broken school and ensure a bright future for their children. The two women refuse to let any obstacles stand in their way as they battle a bureaucracy that's hopelessly mired in traditional thinking, and they seek to re-energize a faculty that has lost its passion for teaching.

Ulrich Mott is an eccentric and versatile social climber with grandiose plans to affect United States foreign policy. Encouraged in his attempts by his strategically chosen (and much older) wife, the well-connected journalist Elsa Brecht, Mott has a knack for making himself indispensable and impossible to ignore. The only one seemingly immune to his charms is Elsa's daughter Amanda, who might simply disapprove of her mother marrying a much younger man - or perhaps she senses something more sinister beneath the smooth-talking surface?

After Margaret, a divorcée living in Dublin, loses her teenage son, she develops an unorthodox relationship with Joe, a homeless youth. Their tentative trust is threatened by his involvement with a violent gang and the escalation of her ex-husband's grieving rage.

The legendary Roberto Duran and his equally legendary trainer Ray Arcel change each other's lives.

A young man with a bright future suffers a near-fatal accident and recreates his new life with the help of an unlikely animal friend.

In a suburban landscape, the lives of several families interlace with loss, despair and personal crisis. Esther Gold has lost focus on all but caring for her comatose son, Paul, and neglects her daughter and husband. Lawyer Jim Train is devoted to his career, not his family. Helen Christianson wants to find a new spark in life, while Annette Jennings tries to rebuild hers.

A pair of twin brothers from East L.A. choose to live their lives differently and end up on opposite sides of the law.

A drama set in the American South, where a precocious, troubled girl finds a safe haven in the music and movement of Elvis Presley.

In order to be reinstated to the bar and recover custody of her daughter, a hotshot lawyer, now in recovery and on probation, must take on the appeal of a woman wrongfully convicted of murder.

The true story of 20-year-old Colleen Stan, a hitchhiking woman abducted by a young couple and held captive for seven years, during which time she's tortured and forced to live as a slave to her captors.

Evangelist Carlton Pearson is ostracized by his church for preaching that there is no Hell.

Years after her son's suicide, a woman longs to confront both the past and a friend of his who took his business idea.

After her stay-at-home husband leaves her, a workaholic lawyer finds that she is not completely up to the tasks of caring for her young son, ailing father and household all by herself.

The eldest son of a ruthlessly tough MMA champion must fight his way out of the abusive cycle his father has continued.

Middle-aged widow Beatrice Hunsdorfer and her daughters Ruth and Matilda are struggling to survive in a society they barely understand. Beatrice dreams of opening an elegant tea room but does not have the wherewithal to achieve her lofty goal. Epileptic Ruth is a rebellious adolescent, while shy but highly intelligent and idealistic Matilda seeks solace in her pets and school projects, including one designed to show how small amounts of radium affect marigolds.

Two separate stories mesh - in the first, a young music teacher, Maggie Andrews, begins dying of a heart condition and her son Nathan tries to get a pair of Christmas shoes for her before she dies. In the second, lawyer Robert Layton and his wife Kate are slowly drifting apart and the matter comes to a head during Christmas when Kate takes over for Maggie for the school choir.

A nightmarish evening unfolds for neighbors David and Robert when they accidentally hit a woman on her bike and flee the scene. While David is increasingly plagued by feelings of guilt, Robert shows no remorse and becomes overbearing and possessive.

Eddie Dodd is a burnt out former civil rights lawyer who now specializes in defending drug dealers. Roger Baron, newly graduated from law school, has followed Eddie's great cases and now wants to learn at his feet. With Roger's idealistic prodding, Eddie reluctantly takes on a case of a young Korean man who, according to his mother, has been in jail for eight years for a murder he didn't commit.

A pro ball player with a substance abuse problem is forced into rehab in his hometown, finding new hope when he gets honest about his checkered past, and takes on coaching duties for a misfit Little League team
Similar titles

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

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 scandalize her husband, Pierre (William E. Shay).

The daughter of a Mexican aristocrat endures the travails of the Mexican revolution.

Leslie MacLeod (Kathryn Adams) comes to England from the U.S. so that she can settle financial affairs with Lord Glenayr (Jack Holt), whom she has never met. She encounters Duke Lanzana (Fred Malatesta), who sees her as a way to pay off his mounting debts. He captures her and then heads to a nearby cape to steal a buried treasure that actually should belong to the MacLeods.

When her lover deserts her, Gioconda Dianti seeks revenge by wrecking the lives of other men. When famous sculptor Lucio Settala meets her and asks her to pose for him, she sets out to ruin him. She captivates the artist with her charms, and he soon forgets his wife Silvia, their daughter Little Beata, and even his work. After Gioconda defies Silvia to take her husband back, Lucio shoots himself in a fit of desperation. Although Silvia nurses him back to health, Lucio soon returns to the enticing Gioconda. When Silvia's subsequent quarrel with Gioconda becomes a fight, Gioconda attempts to destroy Lucio's statue, but it falls on Silvia and is saved. Silvia, however, is crippled for life. Because of this, Lucio's sanity is affected and he becomes a raving maniac. Later, cast aside by her "man of the world," Gioconda also descends into madness. A lost film.

Florid melodrama of misunderstandings, betrayal and desperation as Theda schemes to keep the title secret.

Camille is a courtesan in Paris. She falls deeply in love with a young man of promise, Armand Duval. When Armand's father begs her not to ruin his hopes of a career and position by marrying Armand, she acquiesces and leaves her lover. However, when poverty and terminal illness overwhelm her, Camille discovers that Armand has not lost his love for her.

Mary Lynde (Theda Bara) is an innocent girl who has grown up in New York's Greenwich Village. One of the artists there, Felix Benavente (Sidney Mason), uses her as model when he paints a portrait of the Madonna for a church. His friend Robert Sinclair (Hugh Thompson) corrupts Mary so that her father (Walter Law) casts her from his home. She goes to live with Sinclair in his mountain lodge, but after the birth of a child, he callously casts her aside. Subsequently, her baby dies and she sinks to the depths of despair.

Theda Bara's vamping is at its most evil here. She plays the Russian Princess Petrovitch, who loves only her pearls. Her husband, the Prince (E.F. Roseman), sells state secrets to a spy to pay her exorbitant bills, and her response is to report him to the secret police. Then she runs off to Monte Carlo with her lover, Count Zerstoff (Emil deVarney), but she poisons him after he racks up a load of gambling losses.

Theda Bara does her usual vamp turn in this picture, but this time she's a vamp who turns out to have a heart of gold. Her character, Blanchette DuMonde, is known as "the wickedest woman in Paris," and because of this sordid reputation, she is not allowed to serve as a nurse during World War I. So she becomes an Apache dancer instead.

Vere Herbert lives with her wicked mother, Lady Dolly (Marie Curtis), who is living in sin with Lord Jura (Glen White). Although Vere is in love with an opera singer, Lucien Correze (Harry Hilliard), Lady Dolly convinces her that marrying the dissolute Prince Zouroff (Walter Law) will save her father's honor. But the Prince makes her miserable and insists on having his mistress, Jeanne deSonnaz (Caille Torrez), live with them.

Mary Doone (Theda Bara) is a poor British girl who runs away from her adopted family because the father made a pass at her. She lives at a parish house, and at the outbreak of World War I, she becomes a Red Cross nurse.
A young inventor who has developed a television set falls in love. Early experimental sound film produced by Paramount in several versions, including a Romanian one, spoken "100 % in Romanian".

The man meets and falls in love with a girl much younger than himself, and decides to cast off the woman with whom he had had a love affair. He goes to his old sweetheart and asks her to return his love letters. She does so on condition that he tell the new girl of their affair. He does not live up to his promise, but tells her that she is the first girl he has ever loved. In the meantime, he has lost his letters, and the new sweetheart, upon finding them, returns them to the owner. From this source she is advised to have nothing more to do with him unless she is convinced in her own mind that he is kneeling to her in spirit at all times.

Wilbur Stone is falsely accused of a crime, convicted on circumstantial evidence and "railroaded" to the penitentiary. As an odd coincidence. Frank Fink, a hardened degenerate, is sent up at the same time and he becomes a prison parasite on Stone. Both men are released about the same time.

Elton Gates, having served seven years for submitting to temptation with a bank's funds, is released. His uncle John sends him $500.00, with which to start life anew. He has hardly rested in a cheap lodging house when Detective Doolittle spies him and commences to make him an object of special scrutiny.

Great-grandfather Huxley, an old soldier, is neglected by his grandson and wife. He feels he is in the way and seriously contemplates suicide. One night while the grandson's wife is giving a party, the house catches fire and the old man rescues their children from the burning building.

Zelda Dunbar, a detective, on the trail of two notorious blackmailers, offers herself as their accomplice and is accepted by Eldridge and Mortimer. Zelda wins the heart of Kendrick, a rich bachelor. Zelda slips Kendrick a note saying her father is going to force her to marry a man she does not love. Kendrick takes the girl into another state.

A necklace belonging to Mrs. Stuyvesant is stolen from Lawyer Smirney's office. It was smuggled in from China years before. Chief Knox is notified and believes Smirney guilty when he finds a diagram in his pocket, and following it, finds a necklace. Ho Fing-Tang, a Chinaman, studying law in the office, is not suspected by Knox, but Spider, a newspaper reporter, believes differently. Ho Fing-Tang is injured and in a delirium keeps repeating "Huns 764." Spider goes to the office and from a book called "Hun's 129 Reports," he extracts the real necklace. The stones Knox found prove to be paste.

Bessie Morris, a daughter of the rich, has grown tired of the lazy life which she is forced to live and longs to get out in the world and do some good. Her father, who believes in letting his daughter think and decide for herself, suggests that she pay a visit to his old nurse, Widow Hobbs. She is delighted at this suggestion and leaves for the village the following day. Here she meets Samuel Jenkins, a rural lawyer, who pays her great attention. Their friendship finally grows into love and she promises to marry him as soon as he is able to support her. Shortly after she goes back to the city, not revealing to him her wealth or social standing.