Summary
In the chiaroscuro of early-1920s ambition, a scholarship boy drifts from lecture halls lit by gaslight into drawing rooms where laughter is edged with gold. Paul Potter, pockets jingling with coins earned by sweeping corridors, is adopted by a coterie who treat life as a roulette wheel; they toast his future while quietly auctioning off his past. Sylvia Castle—ink-stained letters, calico dreams, a heart tethered to river mist—becomes the stake he is persuaded to surrender for Muriel Evers, a siren swaddled in chinchilla and marital bad faith. Once the swap is complete, the tinkle of wedding bells mutates into the clatter of divorce papers; Muriel’s husband, cuckolded and vengeful, signs her freedom just as Paul signs away his name to a woman who collects partners like pearls. Fate, that inveterate dramaturge, yanks the rug: Sylvia’s father leaps from a window after the ticker tape annihilates his fortune, and the girl once promised a porch-swing eternity now threads neon avenues, auditioning for survival. She lands in a rag-tag stock troupe where Henry Leamington—once the toast of Broadway, now a vessel for bourbon—finds in her gaze a reason to cork the bottle. Paul, discovering Muriel’s appetites roam farther than his wallet can follow, slinks backstage on the eve of Sylvia’s opening, begging for a backstage-door reprise. She refuses to be any man’s mistress in hindsight; Muriel’s Duesenberg wraps around a tree, freeing Paul just as Henry, sobered by rejection’s aftershock, steps into the spotlight and delivers a performance that reclaims his name. Curtain falls on two marriages: one forged by wreckage, the other by will.
Synopsis
While working his way through college, Paul Potter acquires a flock of wealthy friends who encourage him to give up his hometown fiancée, Sylvia Castle, for Muriel Evers, a flirtatious married woman. After Sylvia releases Paul, and Muriel's husband divorces her for infidelity, Paul and Muriel marry. Meanwhile, when Sylvia's father dies after being ruined in the stock market, she goes from one job to another in the city until she tries acting in a stock company. There she befriends Henry Leamington, an alcoholic leading man, who, as he tutors her, falls in love and stops drinking because of her. When Paul discovers Muriel's unfaithfulness, he renews his acquaintance with Sylvia, who still loves him. After Muriel dies in an automobile crash, Paul's appearance in Sylvia's dressing room before an opening night causes Henry to drink, but after Sylvia refuses Paul's request to be his mistress, Henry braces himself to give a commanding performance, after which they marry.
