Summary
A cuckolded San-Francisco ink-slinger, Morgan Kleath, drags his bruised ego up the Inside Passage to plant a printing press in Dawson’s frozen mud, hoping cold type will cauterize a hotter betrayal; instead he collides with Goldie Meadows—flaxen-haired ward of a saloon sultan—whose smile flickers like a kerosene lamp in a blasting gale. Jealous plug-ugly Joe Duke carves a Bowie-knife signature between Morgan’s shoulder-blades, but Goldie, all petticoat and grit, staunches the wound with her own petticoat, thereby knotting her fate to his. When Duke’s plug-hat brigade ransacks the till, circumstantial shrapnel—Morgan’s blood on the safe, his monogrammed handkerchief, editorials that roasted the crooks—ricochets back at him. Refusing to drag Goldie’s name through the muck, he swallows a perjured silence, letting the noose tighten until his estranged wife erupts from the fog belt, courtroom gaslights catching the steel of her vengeance. Her testimony—an alibi soaked in scandal—clears Morgan but signs her own death warrant; a balcony pistol crack sends her toppling into the aisle, crimson blooming on the snow of her shirtwaist, just as the gavel falls. Freed by widowhood, Morgan now claims both paper and paramour, the front page and the wedding page finally printed on the same day.
Synopsis
Morgan Kleath, fleeing an unfaithful wife in San Francisco, goes to the Yukon to establish a daily newspaper. Shortly after arriving, he meets Goldie Meadows, the ward of dance hall proprietor Tim Meadows. Upon exhibiting an interest in Goldie, Morgan arouses the jealousy of Joe Duke, one of her admirers, and during a fight between the two, Goldie comes to Kleath's aid when he is stabbed in the back. Later, when Duke's associates rob Meadow's safe, a number of clues point to Kleath and he is arrested and charged with the crime. Just as the court declares him guilty, Kleath's wife arrives from San Francisco and testifies that she had seen Kleath and Goldie together the night of the robbery. To save Goldie's reputation, Kleath had refused to defend himself with this alibi. After completing her testimony, Mrs. Kleath is shot and killed by members of the Duke gang, freeing Kleath to make Goldie an "honest woman."
Review Excerpt
"
The first time I saw The Law of the Yukon I expected a moth-eaten travelogue of sled dogs and virtuous Mounties; what unspooled instead was a brittle, boreal noir—nitrate frostbite pressed into 63 bruised minutes. The print, culled from a 16 mm show-at-home edition, crackled like wet kindling, yet every missing frame only deepened its mystique: here is a film that crawls on its belly across avalanche chutes of misogyny, loyalty, and yellow-press hubris, licking its wounds between title cards ha..."
