Toys of Destiny (1915)

• 79%
• 1915
• Isabel Rea
• William J. Butler
• Frank Newburg

Returning from a theatrical performance which she has attended in defiance of her father's veto, the deacon's daughter is attacked by a footpad and rescued by a wayfarer who turns out to be one of the actors. When her father casts her off the actor marries her. After their child is born he goes on a tour and does not return. At her wits' end, his wife leaves the baby on her father's doorstop, in the certainty that the stern old man will do "God's will." The deacon rears the foundling in place of his erring daughter. On his death the girl seeks her fortune in the city. Her inherited talent for acting brings her an engagement. On the opening night a scrubwoman employed about the theater faints outside her dressing room and is revived by her. The woman sees on the dressing table a framed portrait of the deacon and recognizes it. Thus mother and daughter are reunited by accident. The manager, coming to summon the girl, who is holding the curtain, recognizes in the scrubwoman his long-lost wife, whom he has sought in vain after coming out of a hospital, to which he was confined as a victim of a street accident. He has climbed to the top of his profession, but life has been empty for him until now, when he reclaims his wife and daughter.