Romany Rye

Date1919

Can DescriptionsThree-reeler based on melodrama 'The Romany Rye' by George R. Sims. The followuing notes are from American Film Institute Catalog, 1911-1920, p. 514, for 'The Life Line,' a film also based on the play. Jack Hearn, known as the Romany Rye, prefers living with the gypsies rather than claiming the right to his part of his half brother Phillip Royston's country estate, Cragsnest. When he saves Ruth Heckett, the daughter of his friend Joe, a London birdshop owner and burglar, from a theater fire, however he changes his mind and marries her. As Ruth and Jack board a steamer for America to find witnesses to his parents' wedding for proof of his inheritance, Joe's partner Bos gives Ruth a Bible that he stole from Cragsnest, as a present. Unknown to them, the Bible contains the wedding certificate of Jack's parents, which Royston has been trying to uncover so that he can destroy it. After Jack is lured off the steamer by Laura, a gypsy infatuated with Royston, blackjacked, drugged, and thrown into the water, Bos rescues him. At Southampton, where the steamer is wrecked, they save Ruth, who has discovered the certificate, and others in a breeches buoy, while Royston and Laura drown.