Summary
A dewy farm girl, Mary Ellen Ellis, trades clover-scented silence for the city’s chromium glare when silver-tongued Walter Benton vows marriage yet delivers her to a gaudy demi-monde of jazz, gin, and predatory neon. In this electric labyrinth she becomes both moth and lantern: her unblemished gaze disarms Bull Clark, a hulking cracksman with fists like anvils, who swaps jimmy bars for penitence and shadows her like a guardian gargoyle. Their fragile Eden shatters when The Weasel—rat-faced, velvet-gloved—slips through keyholes, stalking Mary Ellen to a tenement whose wallpaper sweats despair. Clark’s salvation act—bursting through transoms to snatch her from violation—sparks a triangular doom: Benton’s return, a brawl of grudges, a switchblade’s glint, and the wrong man splayed on blood-slick parquet. Homicide pins the collar on Clark; he bolts in iron bracelets, dives through a porthole into naval anonymity, leaving Mary Ellen tarred by rumor and the stink of scandal. A charitable stenographer, Jane Murray, drags her from the gutter to an East-Side infirmary where fluorescent mercy hums. There Dr. Graham—Benton’s cousin, stethoscope like a silver question mark—finds in her eyes the antidote to family shame. Love buds between syringes and sulfurous corridors, but Mary Ellen, branded by past indiscretion, flees straight into The Weasel’s sackcloth sack. Gagged in a derelict room that reeks of plaster rot, she seems fated to vanish until a newsboy’s shrill whistle reroutes destiny; Graham storms the hideout, cuffs click, and dawn rinses her name. The film ends with a liner steaming toward horizons—Mary Ellen and Graham at the rail—while Clark, white-cap on distant deck, salutes a freedom he can never personally reclaim.
Synopsis
Under promise of marriage, innocent Mary Ellen Ellis leaves her country home to accompany the experienced Walter Benton to the city. Mary Ellen finds herself in an underworld milieu, but she is able to influence burglar Bull Clark to reform, thus earning his undying gratitude. Clark is able to repay Mary Ellen when he rescues her from The Weasel, who has followed her to her apartment. When Benton returns and finds his wife and Clark together, a fight ensues between the two men in which Benton is killed by The Weasel. Clark is accused of the murder and sentenced to jail, but escapes and joins the Navy. Meanwhile, Mary Ellen is forced to live in shame until she is rescued by Jane Murray, an office assistant in an East Side infirmary. There Mary Ellen meets Dr. Graham, Benton's cousin, and the two fall in love. Fear of the doctor's scorn for her past life forces Mary Ellen to leave, and she is abducted by The Weasel and imprisoned in a vacant room. A newsboy informs the doctor of her whereabouts, and through the doctor's efforts Mary Ellen wins her freedom as well as his love.
