"It Breathes a Spirit of the Best Americanism in Our History"
The wide-ranging storyline of The Melting Pot takes its characters from the Jewish ghettoes of Russia to the Lower East Side of New York.
Social & External
The people behind it
Walker Whiteside
David Quixano
Valentine Grant
Vera Ravendal
Fletcher Harvey
Baron Ravendal
Henry Bergman
Mendel Quixano
Julia Hurley
Frau Quixano
Doc Crane
Quincy Davenport
Henry Leone
Herr Papelmeister
Reginald Denny
(uncredited)
Actress Nina Seabury is primarily interested in her lovers' wealth. Nina begins a relationship with Emory Townsend, whom she mistakenly believes is a wealthy bank president. He is merely a bank cashier. Desperate to fund Nina’s expensive tastes and maintain the illusion of wealth, Emory steals $12,000 from his bank. Despite his sacrifice, Nina ultimately breaks up with him. Following the split, Emory finds true love with Mary Winslow.
Andrews, a former shipping clerk, has amassed a fortune in cocaine and therefore discourages his daughter May's romance with Joe, a policeman. Andrews prefers socialite Roger Hastings, whom May marries but soon discovers is a drug addict. While May is recovering from a nervous breakdown precipitated by the knowledge of Roger's addiction, he slips cocaine into her medication. Soon she also is addicted, a fact which Roger delightedly reports to Andrews. Andrews then commits May to a sanitarium and Roger becomes a procurer for a gang of white slavers. When the gang abducts his sister Julia and takes her to Roger's brothel, he turns against them. Julia is released, and after many complications, Roger returns to Andrews' house and, during a struggle, sets the house on fire, killing them both.
A DA's son gets involved in a drug-related murder, and it's up to his father and sister to get him out.
An orphan named Innocence leaves her county home after her foster-father dies. She travels to the city and makes a living as a novelist. Subsequently, she has an affair with a painter named Amadis de Jocelyn, who later dumps her.
Clean-cut Hugh Carver, a promising freshman, arrives at Sanford College with lofty ideals. His focus on academics and sports is quickly derailed when he falls for popular flapper Cynthia Day and her modern, carefree attitude plus—as the title suggests—her bold red lips. As Hugh is drawn into a world of jazz, late-night parties, and "petting" sessions, his grades suffer. As he struggles to balance the temptations of the era’s rebellious youth culture with his personal integrity and athletic ambitions Hugh must decide if his romance with Cynthia is worth the potential ruin of his future.
Unable to tolerate city life, Sadie Barker leaves her husband Max and with her baby, returns to her birth village; afraid to tell her father that she plans to raise a baby without a father, she pretends that she is still childless and asks Lucy White to look after the infant for a few months. Lucy quickly agrees; hoping to preserve Sadie's secret, she claims that the child is really her own, and even conceals the truth from her sweetheart, Dave Allen. Risking the condemnation of the community, which has already ostracized Lucy for having a baby out of wedlock, Dave decides to stand by his sweetheart. He marries her after Max and Sadie are reunited and take back their child.
Wealthy playboy Jack Edmunds spends some time in a small mountain town, where he makes the acquaintance of local girl Caprtice Talbert and invites her to his apartment. When Caprice's father finds out about it--although nothing happened--he forces the two to marry, and the newlyweds move to Jack's home in the city. Tensions arise between the two as Jack is still resentful over the "shotgun wedding" and Caprice finds that she can't bear living in the big city and wants to return home.
Life is not easy for a young woman with no parents--her mother died and her alcoholic father abandoned her. Nevertheless, she climbs her way out of the underclass, going from prostitute to wife of a count.
After his beloved daughter leaves for the city to pay off his debt, an old farmer goes mad when her letters become less frequent and it is suspected she may be using her body to get the money.
When her husband Jim strikes it rich, Grace, who has had a lifelong fear of poverty, strictly raises her daughter Florence to accept only luxury. When Florence is old enough to have suitors, she quickly rejects penniless artist Durland and marries rich playboy Alfred Griffin, but soon learns that he is an unfaithful spendthrift, so they soon become bitter enemies. In a final effort to ruin Florence's life, Alfred neatly arranges evidence to make her look like his murderer, then commits suicide, but the butler saw everything and is able to clear Florence of this charge; afterward she rushes to Durland and they plan to get married.
In 1826 came into California by way of New Mexico and Arizona Sylvester Pattie, a Kentuckian, his son James and one other man. Though they had passports from the American authorities, Gov. Echeandia received them with great harshness, tore up their passports and threw them into prison. They were liberated after one year mainly through the influence of Donna Ysidora Sepulveda, whom James Pattie afterwards married.
The infant daughter of a wealthy couple is thought to be lost at sea, but she survives and is raised by a poor family.
To protect the family name, a man of morals and integrity marries a young woman his brother got pregnant. The woman continues her loose ways with no regard to her new husband begging her to protect his honor.
Jack is just a cowboy on the Gilman cattle ranch. Born and bred of the west, he is broad-mined and easy going. In direct contrast to him is Frances, a girl of the east, who comes to the west with Gilman's daughter. Frances has been born and brought up in wealth and culture and does not understand the cowboy who refuses to cater to her whim but who tries to dominate her. Later, when he proposes to her, she accepts him. She leaves for the east, promising to marry him when her course at school is finished. Jack sets about to build a cabin for their home. While at her home in the east, Frances is constantly being urged by Raymond Welton, a club man, to forget the rough cowboy, and to marry him.
James Oliver, has a delicate little wife about to become a mother. Their family doctor advises Oliver that he must not become engaged in any physical encounter or get hurt in any way or it would kill her. Soon thereafter Oliver is at the bar when a rough patron of the place invites him to drink. Oliver declines and on insistence by the rough, asks for soda water, which the rough throws in Oliver's face in disgust. Forced to fight or acknowledge himself a coward, Oliver admits cowardice. They all jeer him, when an old man a quiet spectator of the scene, tells the following story visioned in and out in pictures. He takes for his text the statement that, "No man who will admit that he is a coward for a principal is one". He depicts the story of a young man, Thomas Marsh by name, who had a feeling of fear born in his physical being.
Homesick for America, Jack and his pals get aboard a ship U. S.-bound disguised as entertainers. As entertainers they're flops, but evoke considerable mirth among the passengers by their efforts. Jack arouses the jealousy of a Frenchman, who is keen on a young French girl, and is challenged to a fight. The Frenchman fights a la Savatte (the French method, including kicking, bucking, etc.) and is getting the better of Jack, until the latter dons a pair of hobnailed brogans. He consents to remove these if his adversary will put boxing gloves on his feet. The Frenchman gets seasick and is counted out as he leans over the rail, where he is soon joined by Jack.
Tommie Burke is a tomboy, and she can braid a hackamore, rope a steer, ride a broncho, or do any of the things cowboys usually accomplish. Arnold Blake, son of the wealthiest cattleman, is her companion on many wild rides and innocent escapades. Away back in the back bay district of Boston, Charles Percival is starting for the west, with out the farewells of an uncle and two stern maiden aunts, who feel that he has disgraced them forever by his reckless habits. About the time he arrives at the Burke ranch, the latter receives his New York sister and her daughter Mabel.
John Dale runs a small, decent road house on a main trail between distant towns. Nell is his right-hand man. Nell has a half-witted brother, Zeb. She keeps their house and tends the small bar in Dale's absence. Zeb is trusted only with simple, odd jobs about the place. Nell is self-reliant and well able to hold the guests of the place at their proper distance. She is devoted to her incompetent brother. Bart Trevis and young Remsen are rivals for her favor. Trevis is favored and Remsen is not. Through circumstantial evidence Trevis is involved in a crime, Though innocent, he dare not risk standing trial. He escapes to the road house, tells Nell of the fix he is in and asks her to jump the country with him. He remains hidden there for the day, Zeb nearly betrays him while the pursuing sheriff and his son also stop at the road house. But in the end Zeb makes a supreme sacrifice and Nell runs away with Bart at nightfall.
Mojava Matt realizes that he is slipping away from God, when one Sunday morning he cannot even remember the Lord's prayer. He goes as far as "give us this day our daily bread," and stopped there in self-abasement. Packing his burro, he deserts his camp and starts back toward civilization, to find somebody who can tell him the next words.
94-year-old Eleanor Morgenstein tries to rebuild her life after the death of her best friend. As a result, she moves back to New York City after living in Florida for decades.
The story of a young boy in the Midwest is told simultaneously with a tale about a young girl in New York from fifty years ago as they both seek the same mysterious connection.
Jamie Fitzpatrick and Nona Alberts are two women from opposites sides of the social and economic track, but they have one thing in common: a mission to fix their community's broken school and ensure a bright future for their children. The two women refuse to let any obstacles stand in their way as they battle a bureaucracy that's hopelessly mired in traditional thinking, and they seek to re-energize a faculty that has lost its passion for teaching.
Young Cedric Errol and his widowed mother live in genteel poverty in 1880s Brooklyn after the death of his father. Cedric's grandfather, the Earl of Dorincourt, has long ago disowned his son for marrying an American. But after the death of the Earl's remaining son, he decides to accept Cedric as his heir.
An optimistic, talented teen clings to a huge secret: she's homeless and living on a school bus. When tragedy strikes, can she learn to accept a helping hand?
Tom and Mae Garvey are a Tennessee farming couple battling violent floods to save their land. In addition to natural disasters, the Garveys fight to stop a selfish land developer and a local corporation from foreclosing on their farm. While Mae stays at home to care for their children and tend to the crops, Tom finds work as a scab at a steel mill to preserve his family's property.
Anti-Catholic and anti-cleric policies in the Mexican state of Tabasco lead the revolutionary government to persecute the state's last remaining priest.
Maria Altmann, an octogenarian Jewish refugee, takes on the government to recover artwork she believes rightfully belongs to her family.
Members of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division are fighting for their country amidst the rugged terrain of Bastogne, Belgium, in December 1944. Holley and his American compatriots have already seen one of their own, Roderigues, perish under enemy fire. The men try to rebuff another series of Nazi attacks, but what they really need is a change in the weather. Without clear skies, they'll never get the air support they need.
An odyssey through time and memory, centered on a place in New Jersey where—from wilderness, and then, later, from a home—love, loss, struggle, hope and legacy play out between couples and families over generations.
Fanny Price is sent to live with her wealthy relatives, the Bertrams, where she is treated poorly by most except her cousin Edmund. Her life is complicated by the arrival of the worldly Mary and Henry Crawford
A young girl tries to help her grandfather, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s, navigate his increasing forgetfulness, and ends up going on a remarkable adventure with him.
An uninterrupted rehearsal of Chekhov's 'Uncle Vanya' plays out by a company of actors. The setting: their run-down theater with an unusable stage and crumbling ceiling. The play is shown act by act with the briefest of breaks to move props or for refreshments. The lack of costumes, real props and scenery is soon forgotten.
After a cheerleader is sexually assaulted by the high school football team, she must overcome her shame and use the evidence gathered from the subsequent social media firestorm to piece together the night that she can't remember in her fight for justice. Based on the true story of the Steubenville, Ohio rape case.
The relationship of a couple who meet by chance in New York City is put to the test when they encounter a life or death circumstance.
When a rebellious teen embarks on a solo summer journey to connect with her roots, she finds herself in a new world, geared up for the ride of her life, and discovers she had the drive in her all along.
Set in the Ozark Mountains during the Great Depression, Billy Coleman works hard and saves his earnings for 2 years to achieve his dream of buying two coonhound pups. He develops a new trust in God as he faces overwhelming challenges in adventure and tragedy roaming the river bottoms of Cherokee country with "Old Dan" and "Little Ann."
Pete Bell, a college basketball coach is under a lot of pressure. His team isn't winning and he cannot attract new players. The stars of the future are secretly being paid by boosters. This practice is forbidden in the college game, but Pete is desperate and has pressures from all around.
At the end of WWII, Jimmy Picard, a Native American Blackfoot who fought in France, suffers from unexplainable symptoms and is admitted to a military hospital. When doctors suspect schizophrenia, an eccentric psychoanalyst takes up the case and starts a conversation with the veteran.
A retelling of L.M. Montgomery's story of Anne Shirley, an orphan who is accidentally sent to a couple looking to adopt a boy instead.