Fortune's Turn (1913)

• 53%
• 1913
• Wilfrid North
• Ned Finley
• Rose Tapley
• Helene Costello

Having tramped the city day after day in search of a job and finding none, Tom Whyman is reduced to desperation. He has an invalid father to support and has spent his last cent. Honesty having failed him, he resolves to try dishonesty. Seeing a house deserted by its occupants for the evening, he climbs to a second story balcony and enters a window. He is seen, however, by two policemen, who at once hurry toward the house. Tom sees them coming and flees as fast as he can, but being weak from starvation, they soon gain upon him and he realizes that to get away he must take a desperate chance. Tom bursts through the fire-lines in front of a burning dwelling and rushes into the house, hoping to be able to get through and out at the back and so escape his pursuers. In the house he hears the cry of a small child upstairs and rushes up to rescue it. By the time that he finds the child, the stairs are alight and it is impossible to get out of the way. He climbs to the roof, and making a rope of clotheslines, he lowers the baby as far as the top of the nearest fire escape. Tom then makes another life line for himself and is able to let himself down to the ladder, where he faints in a fireman's arms. Tom is taken to the hospital, for he has been badly burned, but, having been recognized by the policeman, a guard is put over him spending his recovery from his injuries. He is visited constantly by the mother of the child he had rescued, a poor widow, who is filled with gratitude for what he has done for her. The newspapers take up his case and Tom is pardoned without trial. A kind sympathizer offers him a job and he is able to marry the widow who has fallen in love with him and whose love he returns. His fortune has turned and he is able now to support both his father and his wife in comfort and happiness.