Stand Up and Fight

Wallace Beery and Robert Taylor square off in a clash of wills and brawn in this frontier adventure set in 1844 Maryland. Beery, with characteristic bluster and his career on the wane, plays Boss Starkey, a stagecoach line overseer confronting tough times brought by a "teakettle on wheels" -- the new steam locomotive. Taylor, handsome, heroic and on a career upswing that would last into the 1950s, portrays Blake Cantrell, a former plantation owner who suspects Boss may be compensating for his business losses by trafficking in slavery. Florence Rice, daughter of famed sportswriter Grantland Rice, plays the stagecoach line owner whose growing romance with Cantrell may be jeopardized by ties between her company and slave-trading. W.S. Van Dyke II (The Thin Man) directs the action, working from a script penned in part by the man who would become a key author in hardboiled crime: James M. Cain of Mildred Pierce and Double Indemnity.

• adventure
• drama