Gambler Richard Barthelmess meets Ann Dvorak on ship while returning from Europe, and they fall in love. However, her brother, Robert Barratt, is also a tough egg, and he orders Barthelmess off with guns. He takes refuge in Helen Lowell's house, where she tells him the story of the man she loved when she was eighteen, also played by Barthelmess.
It's a charming and sentimental movie based, on, of all things, a Damon Runyon story, and not only is Miss Lowell an absolute sweetheart, but so is Helen Chandler, playing her a half century earlier. But the movie is peculiarly brief.
It was the last movie Barthelmess made under his long-running contract with First National (now Warner Brothers). He had aged out of his youthful star image, his efforts to retain his looks had failed several years earlier due to unsuccessful plastic surgery, and he was aging into a stoop-shouldered man, who could star act up a storm..... but that's not what a star is. So Barthelmess would head out, receive fewer and less successful roles, and give one final great performance in Only Angels Have Wings. He would join the Naval Reserve in 1942, and after the War, retire to Long Island, a rich man. He died in 1965 at the age of 68.
It's a charming and sentimental movie based, on, of all things, a Damon Runyon story, and not only is Miss Lowell an absolute sweetheart, but so is Helen Chandler, playing her a half century earlier. But the movie is peculiarly brief.
It was the last movie Barthelmess made under his long-running contract with First National (now Warner Brothers). He had aged out of his youthful star image, his efforts to retain his looks had failed several years earlier due to unsuccessful plastic surgery, and he was aging into a stoop-shouldered man, who could star act up a storm..... but that's not what a star is. So Barthelmess would head out, receive fewer and less successful roles, and give one final great performance in Only Angels Have Wings. He would join the Naval Reserve in 1942, and after the War, retire to Long Island, a rich man. He died in 1965 at the age of 68.