Summary
Adam, gray-haired sentinel of a weather-beaten roadside inn, keeps watch over cracked crockery and cracked dreams until Nell—voice like nickelodeon moonlight, all spangles and sass—waltzes in with a traveling revue on its last gasp. The old man’s marrow quickens; the lobby’s dust motes start to waltz. Unbeknownst to him, Nell and Adam’s estranged son Jack once traded vows backstage between matinee fumes and prop-sword clangor, their romance curdling when she clung to greasepaint instead of him. Enter Mason, velvet-voiced matinee idol whose smile is a switchblade, and Eppstein, ledger-thin impresario who can smell a sucker’s wallet at twenty paces. They drape Adam’s heart across the footlights, coax him to bankroll their wheezing tour. The troupe beds down in the hotel; Jack reappears like a bad omen; old embers flare, then collapse into ash when Nell again chooses the stage over domestic shackles. The caravan slips away at cobalt dawn, Adam riding shotgun, pockets hollowed by promises. On the road Mason juggles affections—Nell’s star-struck ardor versus Clara’s wounded hunger—while Eppstein keeps the books crooked. Nell, discovering that Adam’s savings are the truss keeping the whole tatty edifice from folding, tears up her contract mid-spotlight. The producers retaliate by spiriting the old man to a sawdust storeroom, wiring Jack counterfeit pleas for ransom. Suspicion ignites the son; he hurtles toward the encampment just as Nell, armed with a coal-oil lamp and righteous fury, busts Adam out. In the aftermath, Adam bankrolls a one-way exodus for the honest players while Mason and Eppstein slink into oblivion. The footlights dim; Nell’s sequins gather dust. She returns to Preston, soul rinsed of limelight, to find Jack waiting under the hotel’s crooked shingle. Adam, love quietly cauterized, presses their hands together and retreats into the hush of ticking lobby clocks.
Synopsis
Adam, the proprietor of a country hotel, loses his heart to Nell, a soubrette. Unknown to the old man, the girl and his son Jack were formerly sweethearts, but had quarreled because of her refusal to leave the stage. Knowing of Adam's love for Nell, Mason, the leading man, and Eppstein, the manager, induce him to finance the show. This is on its last legs. The members of the company stop at Adam's hotel while in Preston and thus Nell meets Jack again. Upon her refusal to give up the stage, Jack angrily leaves her. When the show departs early next morning, Adam goes with it. Nell is fascinated by Mason and the latter plays her against Clara, who also fancies she loves him. Nell does not know that it is Adam's money which is backing the show. When she does discover the manner in which the old man is being fleeced, she promptly declares her intention of quitting the company. The conspirators vainly plead with the girl. Desperate, Mason and Eppstein kidnap Adam and wire Jack in the old man's name asking him to telegraph $600. His suspicions aroused, Jack determines to investigate. In the meantime, Nell has discovered Adam's predicament. Securing assistance, she rescues him just as Jack arrives. In gratitude, Adam advances enough money to send all the members, with the exception of the plotters, home. Nell, sick of the stage, returns to Preston with Jack and his father. The latter learns of their love affair, and concealing his own love, gives them his blessing.
Review Excerpt
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Nobody whistles inside the first reel of The Barnstormers; the film would consider such casual merriment a breach of protocol. Instead, William H. West’s camera lingers on the porch of a sagging county hotel as though it were the lip of an archaeological dig, every splinter a shard of prelapsarian Americana. The year is 1915, the medium is still learning to walk without captions, and this six-reel miracle—long thought lost until a nitrate canister surfaced in a Slovenian monastery—pulses with t..."
