Le fleuve de feu

With the oil boom on, Milton Sills show up in Dallas with three cents in his pocket and stops at the town's most expensive hotel. He phones the newspapers with the anonymous tip that he's in town, probably representing a wealthy syndicate. When the reporters collar him, he says he's just a poor man. Soon he has ten thousand dollars in his pocket and the friendship of Bert Woodruff, his wife, Josephine Crowell, son John Roche, and the frustrated love of daughter Anna Q. Nilson. She's jealous because she imagines he's in love with Barbara Parker, who's working as an oil lease agent. The family were struggling farmers, but now the money is rolling in, and the wolves are closing in. Sills protects them, with fists when necessary, but he's angry because the Colonel who got him court-martialed in France has told people about it.... not the lies, of course.

It's a handsome movie, filled with the sort of images of boom towns that are still in use today, with a dynamite finale of a fire and a flood. It's a good-natured movie, with Sills playing the bluff man of action, and the cast provided a fine mix of comedy and drama. Miss Nilsson gives a fine performance, demonstrating why she was top-billed through the end of the silent era.