Plot
While traveling to Nome, Alaska, Roy Glenister (Gary Cooper) meets beautiful Helen Chester (Kay Johnson), who soon becomes his sweetheart. Glenister is one of several owners of a lucrative mine called The Midas. When he arrives in Nome, he discovers that his partners, Slapjack Simms (Slim Summerville) and Joe Dextry (James Kirkwood), are in the middle of a legal dispute with three corrupt officials: United States Marshal Voorhees (Jack Holmes), Judge Stillman (Lloyd Ingraham), and a politician named Alec McNamara (William "Stage" Boyd ). They have been engaged in a racket claiming titles to various mines, ejecting the miners, and then making McNamara owner of the disputed properties.
The three corrupt officials lay claim to The Midas. McNamara also steals money from Glenister, Dextry, and Slapjack, preventing them from enlisting legal help from the United States. When Dextry and Glenister plan a vigilante action, McNamara calls in a detail of soldiers to protect "his property". As Glenister and McNamara prepare for a gunfight, they are dissuaded by Helen, who suggests that the courts handle the dispute. Later, after jealous saloon owner Cherry Malotte (Betty Compson) lies to Glennister telling him that Helen and McNamara are conspiring to cheat him again, Glennister and McNamara settle their differences with a spectacular fistfight, with McNamara getting the worst. Afterwards, Glenister wins the hand of Helen.
Read more about this topic: The Spoilers (1930 Film)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“Those blessed structures, plot and rhyme—
why are they no help to me now
I want to make
something imagined, not recalled?”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
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—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)