The Purple Highway

Ruth Carroll, a schoolteacher in New York's Lower East Side, meets Bolshevist Alexis Minski at her grandfather's bookstore. After Ruth complains to her superintendent about undernourished schoolchildren, Minski's ravings cause her suspension, and she joins the Reds. Meanwhile, Captain Nathan Levison, returning from the Argonne, is assigned by the Secret Service to investigate New York's radicals. While visiting the Carrolls to announce the imminent arrival of Ruth's brother Davy, who saved Levison's life but lost his foot, Levison falls in love with Ruth. Chagrined, Minski convinces Ruth that Levison plans to arrest her and her grandfather, whereupon Ruth furiously requests that Levison be killed. After Governor Alfred E. Smith signs a bill making it illegal to display the Red flag, the Bolshevists plot to assassinate him, the Mayor of Seattle, and Attorney General Alexander Palmer, but Davy, with other soldiers, break up the meeting.

Richard Lawrence, an Army Aviator, introduces his friend, Count Zurich, to Zenia, his father's beautiful ward. The Count becomes infatuated with the girl and determines to win her. General Lawrence, Richard's father, is ordered to prepare for war. as Prince Dureseign is gathering an army to overthrow the government. In a terrific battle, the forces of Dureseign are driven back. Zenia and Richard fall in love, he proposes and she accepts him. Dureseign's forces are greatly augmented in numbers, surround General Lawrence's army and the General sends his son in a fast aeroplane for reinforcements.

In 1840s New York, the uneventful and boring days of the daughter of a wealthy doctor come to an end when she meets a dashing poorer man — who may or may not be after her inheritance.

In pre-WWI England, a youngster is expelled from a naval academy over a petty theft, but his parents raise a political furor by demanding a trial.

Twenty-one-year-old Harry Tremaine has perfected an airplane motor which he hopes will make his fortune a dream he shares with his fiancée, Alice. One night Harry receives word that his father, who has been leading a hermit's life out West, has suddenly died. He discovers through his miserly ways his father left him a fortune of $200,000. Flush with his new wealth Harry becomes ensnared by Betty Belgrave, a cabaret entertainer, and her dancing partner, Wilbur Lorimer and it not long before he has squandered his money. Though desperate when he sees a young girl in danger of drowning, Harry rescues her, and her grateful millionaire father provides the capital to make Harry’s airplane motor a reality. Alice and he are married while Betty becomes a derelict.

It's autumn in New York. Sam has broken up with his girlfriend and his father has recently died. World-weary and sloppy drunk, he finds temporary solace in the arms of Anna, a mysterious vampire who draws him away from his friends and into a web of addiction and madness.

After graduating from a convent school, Betty travels to New York to visit her relatives, the Hastings. She quickly catches the eye of Jim Denning, a wealthy neighbor who proposes to her, but Betty decides to experience city life before settling down and finds work as a salesclerk. When the floorwalker becomes too familiar, Betty quits and her showgirl friend Maizie Follette helps her get a job as a cabaret dancer, but Betty finds that’s a tough racket too and decides city life on the loose isn’t for her.

Young Frederica Calhoun, naïve to the ways of the world, having grown up on her father’s Montana ranch, is swept off her feet by the arrival of Lord Cecil Grosvenor, a prospective buyer. He opens her eyes to a hitherto undreamed-of world of refinement and he by her unfailing sweet disposition and sunny bubbling good spirits. They are soon engaged, but during a trip to New York to visit his sister Frederica begins to let her doubts get the better of her and disguising herself as a man follows him to the French Ball, but all turns out well in the end.

When a man stops at a motel one evening in 1961, his tormenting behavior drives one of the people present at the motel to remember his experiences in a concentration camp during WWII.

Slightly ironic comedy of wretches, who come to understand the rich and are able to accept charity, and also about how love and work prevail over the factory owner's son.

This ceremony requires greenbacks but the groom came up short.

Young bricklayers Franta Doubrav and his friend Béla meet two girls, Mařka and Vlasta, on their way back from a friend's wedding, but they only manage to call them by their name and the construction site they are currently working on. Imagine their surprise when they discover that Mařka is a trained bricklayer who has joined Franta's father's work crew, where she proposes a new way of working that will help catch up on the construction delays. As a young girl, however, she must first deal with the distrust of the older and more experienced bricklayers.

Walter Lee Younger is a young man struggling with his station in life. Sharing a tiny apartment with his wife, son, sister and mother, he seems like an imprisoned man. Until, that is, the family gets an unexpected financial windfall.

An alcoholic ex-football player drinks his days away, having failed to come to terms with his sexuality and his real feelings for his football buddy who died after an ambiguous accident. His wife is crucified by her desperation to make him desire her: but he resists the affections of his wife. His reunion with his father—who is dying of cancer—jogs a host of memories and revelations for both father and son.

This lyrical comedy story takes place in two hot days in the small South Bohemian village. On the shore of a small pond, summer guests and local youth meet. As is typical of the works of Hrubín, it is a conflict of youth and age, life and death, represented by the medical student Zuzana and her beloved Jirka.

Just as Mr. and Mrs. James Randolph Emerson, Jr. are about to depart on their honeymoon, Lucille Emerson discovers her husband gazing at a photograph that bears the inscription, "With love to my husband, Grace." Too proud to question James about the photograph, Lucille is tormented by the image of the woman for many years. Finally Lucille becomes involved in a flirtation with another man, and when her husband learns of her infatuation, he becomes insanely jealous. Enraged, he is choking her when a small boy rushes into the room and collapses. James leaves Lucille, who returns the boy to his tenement home. While there, Lucille discovers that the child is James's son, born to a woman who died in childbirth.