Constance Cummings

Walter Huston stars as an idealistic bank president who has been making loans to depositors without sufficient collateral. When there's a run on his bank, his loyal staff rallies local small businessmen to make more deposits which moves the directors to keep the bank afloat. Released shortly after FDR's New Deal, this film whole-heartedly espoused Roosevelt's ideals.

Walter Huston stars as an idealistic bank president who has been making loans to depositors without sufficient collateral. When there's a run on his bank, his loyal staff rallies local small businessmen to make more deposits which moves the directors to keep the bank afloat. Released shortly after FDR's New Deal, this film whole-heartedly espoused Roosevelt's ideals.

It's the 1930s, the Depression era, and the Board of Directors of Thomas Dickson's bank want Dickson to merge with New York Trust and resign. He refuses. One night, Dickson's bank is robbed of $100,000. The suspect is Matt Brown, an ex-convict whom Dickson hired and appointed Chief Teller. Brown, who's very loyal to Dickson, refuses to say where he was that night. He actually has two witnesses for his alibi, Mrs. Dickson and fellow worker Cyril Cluett, but Brown is protecting Dickson from finding out that Mrs. Dickson was with Cluett having a romantic evening. Cluett, who has a $50,000 gambling debt, is actually responsible for the robbery, but lets Brown take the rap. Will Brown's loyalty to Mr. Dickson pay off, or send him back to prison?

D. W. Griffith is properly esteemed as 'The Father of Film' from his years of discovery making short films at the pioneer Biograph Company and for such pioneering features as 'The Birth of a Nation,' 'Intolerance,' 'Broken Blossoms,' Way Down East' and 'Orphans of the Storm' , but his later films--several of them lost or almost unavailable--were far less critically hailed. Griffith's 1928 comedy-drama 'The Battle of the Sexes' proves to be the exception. It is the story of a middle-aged magnate (Jean Hersholt) who makes a fool of himself when he strays from his loving but frowsy wife (Belle Bennett) and children (Billy Bakewell and Sally O'Neil) into the cynical arms of a gold-digger (Phyllis Haver) and her dishonest lover (Don Alvarado). As these characters are hurt and healed, Griffith expertly draws fine lines between tragedy and comedy, and his skill makes all the difference between emotional satisfaction and formulaic melodrama.