Summary
Aurora Lane’s millinery shop, perched above Spring Valley’s dusty main drag, is a sepulcher of ribbons and rumors; her son Don, collegiate poetry still clinging to his tongue, returns to find the town’s sanctimony braided into every felt brim. The valley’s Presbyterian spires cast long Calvinist shadows across the boy’s illegitimacy, and when taunts turn to fisticuffs, Don’s righteous knuckles become the spark that ignites a prairie-fire of gossip. Jail, liberation, a second incarceration—this time for a murder steeped in moonshine and misdirection—propel Aurora into the candle-lit chamber of Judge Henderson, the silent progenitor who once traded passion for political ascent. Blackmail, tender as it is ferocious, forces the magistrate to the defense table while a lynch mob, drunk on populist bile, storms the jail only to find an empty cot. They pivot toward Aurora’s cottage, torches pirouetting like demented ballerinas, until Don’s revolver sings a brief, authoritative solo. Dawn delivers absolution in the guise of a half-wit confession; Henderson, stripped bare, offers marriage as penance, but Aurora—veins coursing with the same steel that threaded countless hats—chooses the lawyer who loved her without ledger. Mother and son, each newly unburdened, walk separate paths toward imperfect but self-authored futures.
Synopsis
When Don Lane returns from college to visit his mother in the town of Spring Valley, where she has worked in a millinery shop to support him since his infancy. There Don learns that he is an illegitimate child and that his mother is still denounced in Spring Valley. When he fights some cruel townsmen in defense of his mother's name, he lands in jail, although he is soon freed by "Hod" Brooks, a lawyer and long-time friend of Aurora's. Soon after, Don is jailed again, on circumstantial evidence, for the murder of the town drunkard; in despair, Aurora goes to visit Judge William Henderson, who is the guardian of Don's sweetheart Anne Oglesby. Aurora pleads with the judge to defend Don in court; when he refuses, Aurora threatens to expose Henderson as Don's father. Together with Anne, who has overheard the conversation, Aurora forces Henderson to take Don's case. A lynch mob attacks the Spring Valley jail, only to discover that Don has escaped. The mob then proceeds to Aurora's house, which they almost destroy. Don arrives in time to save his mother by threatening the mob with a revolver, and soon after, Henderson and Brooks arrive with the news that a half-witted boy has committed the murder. After the mob disperses, Henderson offers to atone for his sins by marrying Aurora, but she refuses him. Aurora is united with Brooks, and Don with Anne.
Review Excerpt
"
The camera of The Broken Gate opens on a millinery shop whose window display—lace, feathers, veiled mannequins—functions like a proscenium arch for small-town hypocrisy. Director Lloyd Bacon, still apprenticing before his Warner crime heyday, lets the iris shot linger until the glass fogs with breath from the gathering crowd outside. They are not shopping; they are judging. From that first fogged pane, the film announces its central obsession: how quickly a community will stitch a scarlet lette..."
