Summary
In Victor Schertzinger’s 1919 morality play Extravagance, the domestic sphere of Helen and Alan Douglas serves as a microcosm for the precarious volatility of the American Dream during the twilight of the Gilded Age. Living amidst the gilded artifice of New York high society, the couple’s existence is a precarious balancing act of credit and social performance. When Alan, a broker tethered to the whims of the ticker tape, finds himself unable to sate Helen’s avarice for a thirty-thousand-dollar pearl necklace, the narrative fractures into a harrowing subconscious odyssey. This 'film-within-a-film' dream sequence depicts a descent into embezzlement, homicide, and the cold finality of the electric chair—a visceral manifestation of the consequences of fiscal irresponsibility. Upon awakening, the clarity of the nightmare dictates a radical shift in their trajectory, pivoting from the suffocating urban sprawl toward the pastoral promise of the West, though not without a brutal public confrontation on the floor of a panicked Wall Street where the fragility of their social standing is laid bare before a final, humble redemption.
Synopsis
Extravagant-living Helen Douglas and her wealthy husband, broker Alan Douglas, live beyond their means. Alan's friend, Billy Braden, tries to convince them to join him in leaving New York for the more peaceful West, but they refuse. After Helen quarrels with Alan because he will not buy her a $30,000 pearl necklace, she goes to her room. When a policeman comes to arrest Alan for embezzlement of funds to provide for Helen's extravagances, Alan kills the policeman and is sentenced to die in the electric chair. Helen, as she pleads to the judge, awakens to discover that she has been dreaming. She rushes to Alan's office and in the middle of a Wall Street panic, refuses to give him her savings to prevent his ruin. He denounces her in public, but at home she offers all her money for them to leave the city and lead a decent life elsewhere. He accepts this and embraces her.
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