The Fight

Summary

A prim moral crusader with a ballot for a bludgeon storms the gin-soaked avenues of an unnamed American burg, intent on torching every speakeasy, roulette wheel, and jazz-joint that dares exhale the perfume of sin. Jane, gaunt as a Protestant steeple and twice as unyielding, trades hymnals for handbills, promising a dry town where Sabbaths outnumber Saturdays. The city's underbelly—bookies in sharkskin, tuxedoed pimps, piano-thumping prodigals—sniggers, then snarls, unleashing a tripartite assault: forged banknotes to bankrupt her, forged photographs to soil her name, and finally a live round to silence her pulpit-bred heart. She survives the fusillade, her white dress blooming crimson like a reluctant rose, and staggers to the ballot box where virtue, ever the showy diva, takes its bow. In the final iris-shot she exchanges vows with a reformed sportswriter beneath a confetti storm of dry amendments; the saloon doors swing shut, the jukeboxes choke on their last riff, and the town clock strikes a puritanical midnight.

Synopsis

Jane sets out to suppress drink, gambling and dance hall viciousness by way of urging her candidacy as mayor. Like all zealots and would-be social reformers, she finds commercialized vice a hard proposition to defeat. Her enemies try to blacken her character, ruin her bank and take her life, but virtue triumphs and vice is vanquished. At the end of the photoplay Jane is elected mayor and united to the man of her choice.