Rumors for Rent

A two part comedy starring Hank Mann and Carmen Phillips, based on the 1909 play A Fool There Was by Porter Emerson Browne.

Used-car salesman Ralph Slippery has found the perfect way to unload old worn-out automobiles; he places a cardboard model of a new, luxury car next to the junker, and the customer drives off in the jalopy. Ralph is long gone when the irate buyers return.

Millionaire Kent Whitney is warned by Bob Harkness, one of her rejected suitors, about the fickleness of his girlfriend, socialite Myra Hastings. Together they concoct a scheme to teach her a lesson. Kent invites Myra home to meet his family, and she goes, expecting to find an atmosphere of elegance and refinement. Instead, she is greeted by Kent's eccentric father, who affronts her with crude jokes; Kent's mother is introduced reclining on a couch, surrounded by yapping dogs and Myra flees. Upon discovering that the evening was a ruse, Myra decides to retaliate. She hires a fake minister, pretends to marry Kent and then deserts him, leaving behind a message explaining that the ceremony was a farce. Kent pursues Myra and persuades her that a real marriage is in order.

Carteret, an artist, adopts Célestine, a French orphan who gives evasive answers to questions about a certain young "man", her close acquaintance. A detective observes the movements of Célestine and the mysterious stranger, whom he believes is involved in a murder case. The artist, realizing that he is in love with his adopted daughter, is about to propose to her when she "runs away" with the stranger, who is actually the girl he had adopted and who has married an army officer, with Célestine acting as his proxy. Delighted by the turn of events, Carteret decides to marry Célestine immediately.

When jockey Jimmie Driscoll, responsible for making Jim Richardson's horses winners, is fired for being too heavy, he goes to the home of the late Judge Bell, the father of local horse racing. Jimmy is in love with the Judge's daughter Joy, who was left nearly penniless when her father died. Joy's brother Harry writes to her pleading that because he desperately needs money, she should enter the aging Vagabond, the last of the Bell racehorses, in the upcoming annual event. Convinced by crooked bookmaker Spike Bradley that Vagabond will win at twenty-to-one odds, Harry mortgages his half of the house for gambling money. Jimmie discovers that although Vagabond runs horribly on normal turf, she is a "mudder," meaning that she goes into a wild dash on wet ground. After Jimmie and Joy pray for rain, Bradley, learning of Vagabond's condition, threatens the jockey, but Jimmie, riding Vagabond himself in in the rain, wins the race and afterward, Joy's love.

Fearing that his daughter Patsy is becoming a tomboy, John Primmel sends her to a friend back East for education and refinement. Arriving in New York, Patsy discovers that her father's friend has died and his apartment is now inhabited by his son, Dick Hewitt. Dick allows Patsy to stay, and they hire a maid, a housekeeper, and a butler.

The will of T.W. Glutz provides that his bashful nephew, Hank, will inherit the entire estate if married by 2 P.M. of a certain date. Hank loves a girl who lives fifty miles away, but his uncle's executor, a lawyer, arranges a marriage with a somewhat antiquated home product. At 1 P.M. on the appointed day, Hank is sleeping off the effects of the night before. He wakens with a fever, a raging thirst, and an awful taste, when the lawyer enters and tells him the bride is waiting. "And my heart is fifty miles away," sadly muses Hank.

A crusade against women wearing clothes which are more abbreviated than the law allows results in policemen and jurists being captivated by their captives.

A farce of comic characters, full of dream-like impossible doings that compel laughter through being so impossible. One of the characters is in a room where a bomb is exploded. He is blown up through the chimney, takes a jump from the roof and lands on a horse quietly waiting below and gallops off. The whole story is of this same material.

A Harem Scarum Comedy of two Clowns in a Desert Amidst a Bevy of Harem Beauties. It's a Wow and How!

It hasn't rained for week and there are no symptoms of coming rain to be found. An itinerant artist carrying a huge canvas rambles along a country road. He reaches the hut of a hermit inventor who is dying of thirst. The artist paints a picture of a reservoir so realistically that the water overflows and fills a cup which he holds in his hand.