Harold MacGrath was a novelist, a short-story writer, and screen writer. He wrote at least a novel a year, had short stories in the Saturday Evening Post and Ladies Home Journal, and became one of the first well-known writers to work in film. Hearts and Masks is a romantic comedy which was adapted for the screen and for a Broadway play called "Three of Hearts."
Alice Gaynor lives on a country estate with her Uncle John. He won't let her have friends, and she annoys him so much with her pranks that he decides to go away. While he is gone, Alice dresses as a maid, and meets Richard Comstock, an author traveling incognito. She says that she lives in a boarding house, and turns her uncle's home into one, using the servants as guests and the housekeeper as the landlady. All goes well until Uncle John returns, and the action moves to a hotel, a hunt club ball, and an encounter with a gentleman crook before the masks are raised and hearts are revealed.
