Ruby Lafayette

Framed by police inspector Finch and his managing editor, R. H. Steadman, to cover up their own crooked work, reporter John Mull languishes in prison until he escapes, determined to wreak vengeance.

Polly Hopkins belongs to a family of squatters living in Silent City. The poor squatters are constantly at odds with the wealthy "hilltoppers," but Polly's grandmother has gone against popular opinion by teaching Polly to love everybody. Polly keeps the faith, even when her sister's husband is railroaded into jail.

A beautiful con artist marries Hayes Hallan, the owner of a pearl-rich island. No sooner has the couple said "I do" than Beatrice's partners in crime show up, claiming to be the bride's parents.

Twins Nelson and J. Barrington Drake return home for the celebration of their parents' 50th wedding anniversary. Barrington is a wealthy oilman, but Nelson is a pastor in a small rural church, who is struggling to increase his ever-shrinking flock, Barrington tells him that his problem could be solved with the right type of salesmanship, and proceeds to map out a plan to do just that. However, a case of mistaken identity--and a scheme by two of the church's deacons to take over all of the church property--throws a wrench into his plans.

An elderly business tycoon, believed to be dying, decides to give a million dollars each to eight strangers chosen at random from the phone directory.

Tina, who is from an aristocratic English family, believes in the new freedom for women and is an ardent follower of a group of pseudo-bohemians. While riding through the neighboring estate of John Humphries, a wealthy commoner resented by the Carteret family, she is retrieved from a fall by John and blames him for the accident. The following day, she invites him to dinner, pretending repentance, but taking pleasure in ridiculing his old-fashioned dignity.

In the small shipbuilding town of Danforth, Albert Walker realizes, to his distress, that German sympathizers, spies and draft evaders, by voicing doubts about the United States' involvement in the war, are having a disastrous effect on the patriotic spirit of the townspeople.

Jane Maynard opens a mission in memory of philanthropist Bland Hendricks. John Anstell, son of a powerful and selfish millionaire, Michael Anstell, falls in love with Jane, to the old man's disapproval. Anstell tries to undermine Jane's work by hiring reporter Tom Barnett to write an unfavorable story about the mission.

Fellow convicts Cheyenne Harry and Buck Masters become even more bitter enemies when Buck agrees to tamper with the prison's books for the warden's greedy son.

Angela comes to Hollywood with only two things: Her dream to become a movie star, and Grandpa. She leaves an Aunt, a brother, Grandma, and her longtime boyfriend back in Centerville. Despite seeing major movie stars around every corner, and knocking on every casting office door in town, at the end of her first day she is still unemployed. To her horror, when she arrives back at their hotel, she finds that Grandpa has been cast in a movie by William DeMille and quickly becomes a star during the ensuing weeks. Her family, worried that Angela and Grandpa are getting into trouble, come to Hollywood to drag them back home. In short order Aunt, Grandma, brother, boyfriend and even the parrot become superstars, but Angela is still unemployed...

Rosarita, a young relative of the powerful Doña Perfecta in the small Spanish village of Orbajosa, has been betrothed since infancy to her cousin, Pepe Rey Don Jose, although the two have never met. When Pepe comes to visit Rosarita, she immediately falls in love with him, but his offhand remark about the lack of enterprise in the small town alienates Doña Perfecta, and the old woman becomes determined to prevent the marriage.

Sheriff Bob Winton sets out to capture a mysterious bandit named "The Hawk," a phantom rider who is admired by the townspeople, because he steals from the Williams Lumber Co., a ruthless outfit determined to own all the land in the vicinity. This is a lost film.

Mrs. Standing, an old-fashioned country mother, sacrifices to put her son John through college so that he might have a better life. Upon completing school, John goes to the city where his financial success blinds him to the basic values taught to him by his mother.

Sue Gordon, a mountain girl on the Tennessee side of the Cumberlands, lives with her grandmother. When "Granny" dies, Sue--fulfilling Granny's dying wish--goes to Chicago to live with John Peyton, an industrialist who was at one time Sue's mother's fiancé. She finds that Peyton's employees are on strike, and one of the strike's leaders is Peyton's son, Donald, to whom she is becoming increasingly attracted. Complications ensue.

When Bob Stratton returns from war in France, he soon discovers his ranch in the hands of a pretty girl, Mary Thorne, who explains that upon her father's death she became the sole owner. Thorne had been the executor of Stratton's will, and thinking that Bob had been killed, he had appropriated the place for himself.

After serving 5 years in prison for embezzling church funds, Dr. Ephraim Nye returns to Ostable and the scornful gossip of its residents, led by Althea Bemis. There is a typhoid epidemic, and Dr. Nye believes it to be caused by the water in a pond that Judge Copeland, the brother of Dr. Nye's dead wife, Fanny, wishes to use as the source of municipal water supply. Only Katherine Minot supports Dr. Nye, but biologists prove him correct; and Dr. Nye confronts Copeland with proof that he went to prison to protect Fanny, the actual criminal. Copeland finally consents to the marriage of his daughter, Faith, to Tom Stone, the son of his enemy; and Katherine spreads the news of her engagement to Dr. Nye through Althea.

A gang of crooks evade the police by moving their operations to a small town. There the gang's leader encounters a faith healer and uses him to scam gullible public of funds for a supposed chapel. But when a real healing takes place, a change comes over the gang. Lost film, only the most famous scene has survived.

Marriage by Contract is a 1928 American sound part-talkie drama film directed by James Flood.

A great novelist succumbs to worldly pleasures and shirks the writing of which he is capable. His publisher sends him away from the nightlife of New York to a Southern plantation, where he can think clearly, without distraction. But of course, the life there has its own distractions....