The Great Divide

Stephen is a hard-working mine operator. Ruth is a fast-living party girl, the daughter of his deceased partner. Partly out of obligation to his partner and partly out of a growing attraction for Ruth, Stephen decides to set her straight by whisking her away for a sort of wilderness boot camp. The lesson takes; love blooms. But now there's a $10,000 price on his head for kidnapping. There's also another woman in his life -- she claims Stephen is hers.

There have been at least four film adaptations (not all share the same title) of the William Vaughn Moody source play. This robust 1929 work stars Dorothy Mackaill and Ian Keith, whose sound-era careers wouldn't match that of the actress who plays the vampish other woman: Myrna Loy.

In this early musical western, Stephen Ghent (Ian Keith) is a businessman who, after the death of his partner, has been helping to support Ruth Jordan (Dorothy Mackaill), the late man's college-age daughter. While visiting a town near the Mexican border on business, Ghent is shocked to discover Ruth has become a jaded and hard-drinking sophisticate. Convinced she needs a healthy dose of the great outdoors and the simple life, Ghent kidnaps her disguised as a Mexican bandit and carries her away to an isolated cabin in the hills. As the masked cowboy attempts to teach Ruth about the virtues of the simple life, she finds herself falling in love with her captor, though she has a rival for his affections in hot-blooded servant girl Manuella (Myrna Loy). FANCY BAGGAGE was released both as a talking picture and in a silent version, designed to play in small-town theaters (where westerns were perennially popular) which had yet to be wired for sound.