New York Luck (1917)

Anxious to see the world, Nick Fowler boards a train bound for New York. On board he meets Jimmie Keen, a motion picture director, and sees a mysterious beautiful girl who leaves her purse behind. Nick retrieves the purse and inside it discovers a photo of the girl, inscribed with the name Gwendolyn Van Loon. After arriving in New York, Nick pays Keen a visit, but an impertinent office boy prevents him from seeing the director. After a series of similar disappointments in the big city, Nick continues to write glowing accounts of his life to his family back home. While he's writing a letter to his father one day, a guest at an adjoining desk drops a photo of Gwendolyn. The stranger introduces himself as Lord Boniface Cheadle, and Nick becomes an unwitting tool of the man who is in reality Steve Diamond, a crook. Under Cheadle's instructions, Nick goes to the Van Loon house and presents himself as Steve Diamond, which initiates a train of events that culminates in the escape of the real Lord Cheadle while Nick grapples with the crooks until the police arrive. It is then revealed that the whole adventure was invented by Nick to impress his dad, but when Keen reads the story, he is so impressed that he offers Nick a job as a scriptwriter and introduces him to the leading lady: Gwendolyn Van Loon.