Ulysses Davis

A Little Madonna

Ulysses Davis

Patricia Palmer, William Desmond Taylor

Terrorized by Guido, her drunken and brutal father, Marie receives assurance from her dying mother that the Madonna will always protect her. The father reels in just after the mother has expired, too drunk to realize the woman is dead, and finding the whiskey bottle empty, abuses the child. Marie appeals to the image of the Madonna and Guido, in a frenzy of rage, smashes it on the floor. Horrified at the sacrilege, Marie screams.

The Iron Hand

Ulysses Davis

Edward Clark, Hobart Bosworth

After political boss Tim Noland adopts Roy, the infant son of a dead crony, he reluctantly gives the boy up to a doctor who claims that, if raised in an respectable environment, the child will grow into a model citizen. Twenty years later, Roy comes back to live with Tim, and is appalled at his unscrupulous methods of conducting business. Then, he falls in love with Enid Winslow, the daughter of a social reformer who is running for office against Tim. Largely due to Roy's financial support, Winslow wins the election, but, holding a grudge against Tim and anyone connected to him, he refuses to let Enid marry Roy.

The Kiss

Ulysses Davis

Patricia Palmer, George Holt

Directed by Ulysses Davis, the screenplay was based on a story by Marc Edmund Jones. Long thought to have been a lost film, a copy was found and put on YouTube. The film is the only known surviving film in which director William Desmond Taylor appears as an actor. In 1964 Taylor's co-star Margaret Gibson, shortly before her death, reportedly confessed to having murdered him in 1921.

Anne of the Golden Heart

Ulysses Davis

Anne Schaefer, William Desmond Taylor

Upon the death of his wife, George Blake, an attorney, leaves the east. He first places his pretty young daughter, Lucy, in a convent. After traveling for a few years from place to place, in an endeavor to find some location which he might be happy in, he settles in Lariat Hollow, a mining town. He soon falls in love with a woman of the dance hall named Anne. This incites the jealousy of Larkin, the political boss of the town. To break George Blake, Larkin nominates him for mayor, purposing to have him defeated. Anne suspects the plot and tries to influence Blake to refuse the nomination. But Blake has given his word to enter the contest and goes in to win. Blake's daughter writes to her father that she wishes to remain in the convent and become a nun. The father gives his consent. Now with every eastern tie severed, he asks Anne to marry him. She accepts, but says they will wait until after the election.

The Old Man and Jim

Ulysses Davis

This adaptation of James Whitcomb Riley’s poem climaxes in a remarkable apotheosis of death and destruction.