Mabel’s Latest Prank(1914)

The Misleading Widow is a 1919 silent film comedy starring Billie Burke as Betty Taradine. It was based on the 1917 stage play Billeted by F. Tennyson Jesse and H.M. Harwood. The film was produced by Famous Players-Lasky and distributed through Paramount Pictures. It appears to be a lost film.

As early as 1919, Russian Communists (then known as Bolsheviks) were convenient movie villains. This heavy-handed comedy uses the Russian revolution as an excuse for a series of slapstick set pieces.

When Harlan Carr inherited his Uncle Ebenezer's "Jack-O Lantern" house and too his bride there to live, he found himself the unwilling host of a score of hungry relatives within a week. Soon, strange things began to happen. A black cat made the house his headquarters, unexplained sounds could be heard and a shadowy figure floated through the halls at night.

Rooly, Pooly and Dooly were "picture sandwiches," but hardly shining lights, even in that capacity. Consequently they were "canned" by the management. A brilliant idea; one would play the wild man in the village square, a real live show of their own. Rooly and Pooly then basked in the society of fair country belles, but Dooly at length was rescued by Miss Smart, looking for excitement. She was not disappointed.

After graduating from college, rich girl Margery Carr decides to do some good in the world. Much to the chagrin of her father, she decides to open an office to help derelicts. For her secretary, she picks an ex-gangster named Bubbs out of the throng.

Not one but two of Charlie Chaplin impersonators, Harry Mann and Monty Banks, a film directed by Charley Chase still under the name of Charles Parrott. They go driving around town experiencing various car theft problems.

Bob Mortimer, an unsuccessful traveling salesman, picks up the wrong valise and finds it full of money. This gives him the confidence, which he has previously lacked, to convince the townspeople to invest in a new factory, prevent Josiah Wiggins from absconding with the invested funds, and marry Miriam Wiggins.

Snooky lives with a family where the henpecked husband does the washing and takes care of his wife while she rests up in a hammock and his children play with various pets. When one of the children is carried off by an escaped bunch of balloons Snooky goes about rescuing the baby from multiple dangerous situations.

Molly, a glamorous clothing model in New York, though yearning for a life of luxury, spurns the advances of her boss's son in favor of a shipping clerk, late of the backwoods.

Working as a wardrobe girl in a cheap traveling stock company, Mamie Judd secretly loves Jenks, the leading man, who scarcely notices the young girl. She saves Neal Selden, son of a small-town banker, from being accused of robbery and murder, acts committed by the company's manager and leading lady.

In this comedy-drama, May Allison plays Teddy Hayden, a very independent society miss. When her childhood sweetheart, Gerry West (Wallace MacDonald) takes her to a Greenwich Village cafe, she thinks she's found where she belongs. So she spends all her time there and gets herself in a load of trouble.

Daughter of an Eastern lumber king, Stephanie Trent travels in the guise of a schoolteacher to the logging village of Trentsville to search for "a real man." There she meets Jimmy Raymond, a young novelist posing as a local while writing his story. When Stephanie comes to Jimmy's cabin to report a supposed plot against him, he acts as though he intends to assault her. She nearly throws herself out the window but is stopped by Jimmy, who explains that he is working on a novel and merely wanted to determine a young girl's reactions. In retaliation, she orders that he be kidnapped and held in a nearby cabin, but remorsefully nurses him back to health when he is shot trying to escape.