Summary
Nell Baxter, a provincial dreamer standing on the precipice of a burgeoning theatrical career, finds her aspirations catalyzed by a chance encounter with a seasoned leading man at a nondescript railway station. Upon her migration to the neon-drenched labyrinth of Broadway, her ascent is intercepted by David Montieth, a stage manager whose patronage is inextricably linked to predatory carnal expectations. While Nell’s heart belongs to the idealistic playwright Paul Neihoff, Montieth’s discovery of their liaison triggers a vindictive cancellation of her debut. Driven to desperation, Nell confronts Montieth in his private quarters, where a Faustian bargain is struck: the survival of the production in exchange for her virtue. The ensuing violence—a frantic stabbing—spirals into a tragic crescendo involving Neihoff’s sacrificial suicide and Nell’s own ritualistic self-immolation during the play's final act. However, this harrowing descent into Grand Guignol remains a fabricated cautionary tale, a narrative artifice constructed by the leading man to disillusion Nell from the lethal allure of the footlights.
Synopsis
While awaiting the train to Broadway, Nell Baxter meets the leading man of a repertory company to whom she confides her ambitions. Upon arriving in the city, Nell attracts the lascivious eye of stage manager David Montieth, who eventually gives her the starring role in a play with the expectation that he will be favored with her affections. Nell, however, has fallen in love with playwright Paul Neihoff. On the afternoon that the show is to open, Montieth learns of Nell's romance and cancels the show. Nell goes to Montieth's apartment to plead with him to open the show, and he consents after setting Nell's virtue as the price of her ambition. When he attempts to collect, Nell stabs him and rushes to Neihoff's apartment. The playwright tells her to go to the theater as if nothing has happened, writes a letter confessing that he killed the manager, and then takes an overdose of a drug and dies. Word comes to Nell after the second act that Neihoff has sacrificed himself, and in the last act, she substitutes a real dagger for the fake one and stabs herself to death. It has all been a story, however, concocted by the leading man to cure Nell of her infatuation with the footlights, and no one has died.
