Summary
An errant slumber and a porter's negligence serve as the serendipitous catalysts for James Forbes’ narrative, as Bob Blake, a jovial 'drummer' or traveling salesman, is carried beyond his destination into the snowy isolation of Grand Cross on Christmas morning. What begins as a logistical inconvenience swiftly transforms into a chivalric crusade when Blake encounters Beth Elliott, a telegraph operator whose luminous presence belies a precarious financial reality. The plot thickens as Blake discovers a rapacious conspiracy: the local capitalist Martin Drury and his sycophant Royce intend to seize Beth’s ancestral home through a tax sale, banking on a clandestine tip regarding future railroad expansion. Through a series of high-stakes maneuvers—including a whiskey-soaked poker game that functions as a theater of interrogation—Blake unmasks the villains' avarice. The climax escalates from a frantic race across frozen terrain, involving a stolen car and a desperate dash to the county seat, to a claustrophobic confrontation where Blake must physically liberate Beth from the predatory clutches of a cornered Royce. It is a tale where mercantile wit triumphs over provincial greed, framed against the backdrop of early 20th-century industrial transition.
Synopsis
Because a Pullman porter falls to eject him from his berth in the morning, Bob Blake, a traveling salesman, is carried past his station on Christmas morning, and finds himself in Grand Cross. The most interesting sight to that town is the pretty face that smiles at Blake through the window of the telegraph office at the station. Blake is rotund, jovial and trustworthy in appearance, and it is not long before he melts the natural reserve of Beth Elliott. During the course of an impromptu luncheon in the station, Blake learns that Beth's old home is to be sold for taxes on the following day. He later gathers the information from Beth's friend, Mrs. Babbitt, that the girl has been allowing a Mrs. Stratton to live in the house without paying her any rent ever since the woman had her little store sold over her head by Martin Drury, the local capitalist. By this time Blake has become deeply interested in Beth and through the medium of a poker game and many applications of "Scotch tea," learns that Royce, a henchman of Drury's, is going to buy in the Elliott place because Drury has a tip that the railroad is going to want the property and that it can be sold for a high price. His antagonism to Royce is heightened by a spice of jealousy for Royce makes love to Beth openly. Discovering that Royce is to start to drive for the county seat very early in the morning, Blake has one of his friends put him to bed, and then gets into the rig in his place. Royce, awakening from the effects of too much "tea," makes a violent dash for the livery stable and finds a small car there which he appropriates and starts in pursuit of Blake. There is a wild race in which the car is overturned and Blake succeeds in reaching the courthouse in time to pay up the taxes in Beth's name. Beaten at this game, Royce returns at once and tells Beth that her drummer friend has attempted to steal her property from her, and then persuades her to sell the property to him for $5,000. The girl accepts the check and then Blake dashes in to explain the whole affair, and tears up the check. But Royce has one more trump card; he gets Beth out to the Elliott place alone, and locking the doors, declares that he will not let her go until she accepts the check. After a desperate struggle with Royce, Blake succeeds in freeing the girl and all ends happily.
Review Excerpt
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In the pantheon of early American cinema, few archetypes resonate with as much cultural specificity as the 'drummer'—the itinerant salesman whose arrival in a dormant town signaled the encroachment of modernity and the hum of commerce. James Forbes’ 1916 adaptation of The Traveling Salesman, directed with a keen eye for both pastoral charm and kinetic suspense, stands as a quintessential artifact of this era. It is a film that balances the levity of situational comedy with a surprisingly trenc..."
