Of the over 30 one-reelers Mary Pickford made in Cuba for Carl Laemmle's Independent Motion Pictures Company, A Manly Man is one of few that survives today. Pickford plays Lola, a young Filipino woman who falls in love with Duncan (William E. Shay), a Caucasian man sent to her village on business. After Lola risks her life nursing his fever and saving him from a knife attack, Duncan marries her and resists the temptation to return to his American fiancée. Directed by Thomas Ince and co-starring Pickford's first husband Owen Moore, A Manly Man was later reissued under the title His Gratitude (1914).