The Man Who Won (1923)
Genre : Western
Runtime : 50M
Director : William A. Wellman
Synopsis
Bill is a gambler, whose friend Scipio goes in search of his wife Jessie. Jessie, fed up with her life of poverty, has run off with the wealthy and villainous James. She has left behind her two children on James' promise that she can send for them later. Scipio leaves the tots with Bill when he goes on his search..
Based on a true story, two-timing boozing wife Roxie Hart kills her lover in cold blood after he leaves her, and finagles her way out being indicted. The basis for Kander/Ebb's 1975 Broadway musical of the same name and its Oscar-winning 2002 film adaptation.
After a work crew stringing telegraph wires across the Great Plains is slaughtered by Indians, Pat O'Leary, the company superintendent, must take out another supply train to make the dangerous trip across open country. The Indians attack and are driven off. On the day the wires are finally strung, the settlers gather to hear the first message from the East.
Lois Wilson (as Lulu) is the spinsterish member of the Deacon family: "The family beast of burden, whose timid soul has failed to break the bonds of family servitude." Her brother-in-law is patriarchal Theodore Roberts (as Dwight Deacon); running the house with an iron fist, he is both a dentist and a Justice of the Peace. As the latter, he accidentally marries Ms. Wilson to his visiting brother Clarence Burton (as Ninian Deacon) while they are out for dinner. Schoolteacher Milton Sills (as Neil Cornish) is also interested in Wilson...
A ranger joins the outlaw gang whose boss he believes is a murderer.
Blondy and Swede are gruff best friends who build skyscrapers. Blondy gets sweet on a girl he saves from a falling beam, Sally, but when he is injured in an accident and temporarily crippled, he rejects her. Swede tries every desperate measure to get Blondy to fight back, to try to walk, even masquerading as stealing Sally away from him.
Ben Jordan runs away after accidentally setting fire to a barn in his small New England community. He returns when his mother dies to find that she has left everything to her ward, Jane Crosby.
Cal Roberts can ride anything with four legs. He enters the contests held at big rodeo. He wins all honors and meets a girl who races horses to help her father clear pressing debts. Complications follow, but Cal wins the girl.
Dick Scott takes his Wild West show to the Balkan kingdom of Alvania where the boy king of the country commands the troupe to give a performance. The king is greatly impressed with the American cowboys and makes them his palace guard. The prime minister starts a revolution, and Dick and the Americans put it down. The boy king sanctions a romance between Scott and Ruth Elliott, the royal governess.
The honest John Graham and the crooked Ross Cheswick battle for supremacy. Despite Cheswick's unscrupulous methods, Dan and his handsome bronco Tarzan win the Big Race for Graham. Dan's prize: Graham's lovely daughter Sally.
A ranch foreman captures a notorious gang of gold thieves. He ties them up and leaves them for a pursuing posse while he goes out to find the gold they stole. When the posse arrives, the gang's leader convinces them that the foreman is actually the gold thief, and the posse sets out in pursuit of him.
Don Luis O'Flagherty (Ken Maynard), a daredevil comes to the rescue of his long-lost father, "Tiger" O'Flagherty (George Nichols), the supervisor of a supply-wagon train destined for the miners in Sonora. Tiger is being terrorized by Jesse Wilks (J.P. McGowan), who hopes to starve the miners out of their claims. Falling in love with Tiger's ward, Sally (Dorothy Devore), Don Luis manages to turn the tables on Wilks, who is killed attempting to rob the supply train.
Dr. Allen Erskine's maiden aunt Elizabeth attempts to save her nephew's floundering marriage by staging the kidnaping of her nephew's son, in the hope that the married couple will be drawn closer together by the experience.
At a trading post in the Northern Dakotas, Hawk Lespard, an unscrupulous trader, is opposed by Jack Jessup, posing as a gambler but actually a scout for the Overland Stage Co., and Kunga-Sunga, a wizard with the lariat.
Wholesome country girl Mary works at the House of Magic beauty salon and pines for the owner Clay. Unfortunately Clay has also been targeted by experienced vamp Rita.
James Duxbury (Lou Tellegen) is an exponent of polygamy, which may not be legal but certainly provides him with several evenings of entertainment. Professor Charles Orme (Matt Moore) falls in love with Duxbury's fourth wife Amy (Margaret Livingston). Things get dicey indeed as Orme tries to figure out whether Amy is still married to Duxbury or not -- in fact, Duxbury isn't sure either.
Nightclub dancer Glory Frayne falls in love with championship boxer Red Lucas . Luca's latest opponent is likeable young pugilist Johnny Regan . When Johnny meets Glory, he is instantly smitten.....
When Marjorie Caner returns from abroad, she is quite lonely in her millionaire father's big house. Learning that a young poet, Anthony Quintard, is living in poverty next door while working on the libretto of a great opera, she skips across the roofs and brings him a Christmas banquet. The poet sees Marjorie, and knowing that he detests wealth, she pretends to be the secretary of the Caner family.....
Richard Kingsley, son of a financier, trying to aid Marjorie Crenshaw and her sister during a raid on a New York roadhouse, is arrested. His father, enraged by the bad publicity, threatens to disinherit him if he doesn't go to Colorado in search of a mine....
Because Bob Meredith (Jack Holt) spends all his time working, his wife Margaret (Lois Wilson) feels the romance has ebbed away from their marriage. One night, while Meredith is at the office, family friend Julian Osborn (Conrad Nagel) -- whose own spouse (Lila Lee) is out of town -takes Margaret to a dance. They wind up at a hunting lodge and begin to get carried away, but stop before things get out of hand. The pair agree to keep their encounter a secret, but unfortunately, they've been seen and word gets back to their spouses.
In the office of Major Northfield, the quartermaster of the Pacific Coast, a leak has been discovered which may endanger the safety of American transports that are secretly carrying troops across the Pacific. Nara-Nara, a Japanese detective, is assigned to the case because his country has guaranteed safety to these transport ships. Nara-Nara believes that Northfield is guilty, although in reality it is Northfield's secretary Kitty Little, a girl of German ancestry, who is passing information to Dr. Ebell Smith, a German agent. Nara-Nara falls in love with Kitty, but soon after discovers that she is the leak in the quartermaster's office.