From the Submerged - 1912

Country: USA
Language: English (intertitles)
Release Date: 12 November 1912 (USA)
Filming Locations: Chicago, Illinois, USA; Essanay Studios - 1333-45 W. Argyle Street, Uptown, Chicago, Illinois, USA (studio)
Director: Theodore Wharton
Writer: Theodore Wharton (scenario)
Stars: E.H. Calvert, Ruth Stonehouse and William Walters
The film begins with a homeless man living in the park. His family apparently has disowned him. However, soon he reads a newspaper and sees a personal from his father--begging him to return. The man arrives to find his man on his deathbed.
The next scene finds the man well off once again--wearing a tux and attending a fashionable party. He escorts his date to a secluded place, as he wants to ask her to marry him. However, both times he tries, people seem to interrupt.
In the next scene, the man and his friends are "slumming"--walking by the very breadline where he once stood. When he tells his fiancée about this, she laughs and thinks it's all rather funny. He just can't bring himself to marry her now and tears up her photo. Instead, he dresses in his old clothes and goes in search of a poor woman who once helped him when he was down and out and ready to jump into the river. He finds her and, in an improbable turn, asks her to marry him--and they are married almost instantly. Only then does he reveal to her his wealth--and they live happily ever after.
Overall, a rather preachy morality tale that actually is pretty good for 1912. Such sentimentality and improbabilities would not have been seen in films made a few years later, but at the time this film was made the film was reasonably well made and received. (Review extracted from IMDB site)