Sweet Alyssum

Tyrone Power Sr. shoots his wife and the man she has betrayed him with. Twenty years later, the man's son is framed for embezzlement so another man can take the money and his wife. He flees and as a school teacher, boards with Power and marries his daughter.

It's a mess of a plot from a novel by the man better known for writing "When Knighthood Was in Flower" but it's handled pretty well, if a bit telegraphically in this short feature from 1915. The movie makers were still learning how to make features at this point and producer William Selig was a bit wary of the form. Nonetheless, the acting is good and if it is apparent that large amounts of plot wound up chopped out of the treatment, the acting is pretty good.

The first half, in fact, is excellent, with the plot being carried almost entirely by the acting. If in the second half there is a bit of a drop-off in an effort to get as much of the book in as possible, well, that's a problem that some movies still have.