Summary
A sanctimonious prohibitionist, Winthrop Chase, sermonizes against the bottle while his carousing son Wint ricochets through speakeasies, staining the family crest with every stagger. Joan Caretall—her gaze a mix of scorn and yearning—hovers at the edges of Wint’s delirium, her father Amos the puppet-master who inverts the ballot overnight, swapping patriarch for prodigy so that dawn breaks on a hung-over joke: Mayor Wint, bleary-eyed, confetti on his collar, the town crest clutched like a bar tab. What follows is a civic miracle stitched from contrails of redemption: lamp-lit ordinances, smashed gin barrels bleeding into gutters, a choir of saloon-keepers hissing vengeance. They dispatch Hetty Morfee—school-desk memory turned siren—to drape a bastard-baby lie across the new mayor, a velvet shroud meant to smother reform. Yet at the crescendo, inside the echoing marble council chamber, Hetty’s voice fractures into truth; the lie slithers away, father and son clasp in chiaroscuro, Joan’s smile ignites like a match struck against midnight, and the town’s last tavern sign flickers out, its neon sigh a requiem for the old, drunken century.
Synopsis
Winthrop Chase is running for mayor on the prohibition ticket in a town where his irresponsible son Wint is infamous for his drunken sprees. Wint is in love with Joan Caretall, whose father Amos is a big political boss. Amos fears Winthrop's power and decides to stalemate him by substituting Wint's name on the ballot for that of his father. The morning after the election, Wint awakens from a drunken stupor and finds himself the mayor. With Joan's support, Wint reforms and begins to clean up the town. Wint's actions earn the enmity of the town saloon owners who induce Hetty Morfee, an old schoolmate, to frame him with a fake paternity suit. At the crucial moment, however, Hetty admits the truth, thus clearing Wint, who is reconciled with his father and wins Joan's love.
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