Babs

Babs Marvin, luminous heiress to a political dynasty, combusts on contact with David Darrow, a razor-edged attorney whose conscience is mortgaged to ambition. Their affair detonates when Darrow uncovers the rot inside Eben Sprague, the senator’s anointed candidate, and weaponizes the secret: swap support to me, or the press gorges on your fraud. Horrified that the man she loves is bartering integrity for a pliant electorate, Babs retaliates with absurdist brilliance, drafting the town’s most conspicuous indigent—Hank Dawes, a ragged ghost of Main Street—into the race. Her satirical crusade, christened “Elect Dawes—Get Him Off Relief,” metastasizes into populist frenzy; the derelict triumphs, the machine sputters, and the lovers reconcile amid the embers of a rigged game.