The Craving
Summary
A cynical machination orchestrates the precipitous fall of a collegiate hero in this compelling drama. Oliver Bailey, a second-string gridiron talent, entangled in the coercive web of gambling debts, devises a perfidious scheme to settle his arrears. He meticulously engineers the incapacitation of star player Foster Calhoun, compelling his own insertion into a pivotal football match. With deliberate malice, Bailey sabotages the game, ensuring a devastating defeat. The college, blind to the true architect of its shame, unjustly scapegoats Calhoun, stripping him of his academic standing, his cherished romantic entanglement, and his societal esteem, casting him into the desolate wilderness of public scorn. This profound betrayal plunges Calhoun into a spiraling abyss of alcoholism and despair, driving him to seek anonymity in the untamed West. There, his vulnerability is further exploited by a calculating dance-hall girl who ensnares him in a fraudulent matrimonial bond. Yet, just as his prospects seem irrevocably dim, a glimmer of hope emerges from the very institution that once condemned him, offering a potential path to vindication. The narrative then pivots on the agonizing question of whether Calhoun, now a broken man, can reclaim his agency and seize this fleeting opportunity for redemption before the irreversible tide of his misfortunes sweeps him away entirely.
Synopsis
Oliver Bailey, a substitute for star player Foster Calhoun on the Newbridge College football team, owes a lot of money to gamblers, and in order to repay it he decides to throw an important game. He tricks Calhoun into drinking too much and when Calhoun is unable to play, Bailey is sent in his place. He deliberately throws the game, but the college holds Calhoun responsible for the loss and expels him. Having lost his reputation, his girlfriend and becoming a pariah in town, he turns into a hopeless alcoholic. Traveling west, he hooks up with a dance-hall girl who tricks him into marrying her. However, he soon receives some good news regarding his old school, but it may be too late for him to take advantage of it.
