The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926)

A young girl is orphaned during the trip West, losing first her mother, then her mother to an unforgiving stretch of desert.

The girl is rescued by Jefferson Worth (Charlie Lane), a man who dreams of turning that desert into a Western paradise with the help of a dam and the Colorado River.

Flash forward several years and he’s ready to turn that dream into reality by joining forces with an Eastern businessman named James Greenfield and his engineer Willard Holmes (Ronald Colman).

After an arduous trip to the Colorado, work on the dam begins. And the now-grown Barbara Worth (Vilma Banky) soon has two men vying for her affections, Holmes and longtime friend Abe Lee (Gary Cooper), one of her father’s assistants.

Holmes wants to whisk Barbara back East. He does manage to whisk her to the new community of Kingston, a town that sprouts up near the site of the dam.

But only momentarily.

Jefferson Worth, Abe Lee and his dad, nicknamed The Seer, believe the dam needs to be reinforced so that it will hold up should heavy rains hit the normally arid region.

Greenfield and Holmes are more interested in turning a profit than in the future of the area and scoff at the idea.

With storm clouds brewing, Worth retreats to a high mesa and builds a new town called Barba. But in Greenfield, he’s made a powerful enemy, one with the ability to cut off his access to financing his endeavors.

Meanwhile, Holmes holds out hope for a future with Barbara, and a chance to prove he’s not the villain who cares only about lining his own pockets.

Review:

An ambitious silent film that includes a sand storm, caravans traveling across the desert, the creation of two towns, a flood and a mad dash to escape the latter.

A century later some scenes — the desert crossing and that mad dash, for instance — hold up better than others. And certainly better than some of the melodramatic twists in the plot.

This film marked the first major role for Gary Cooper. Both he and Colman would become stars when the sound era soon followed.

Not so for Vilma Banky, who was born in Austria-Hungary, signed by Samuel Goldwyn and dubbed The Hungarian Rhapsody when she arrived in Hollywood.

She couldn’t speak English, so her stardom ended when the sound era began. But she starred in three more films with Ronald Colman after this one.

Directed by:
Henry King

Cast:
Ronald Colman … Willard Holmes
Vilma Banky … Barbara Worth
Gary Cooper … Abe Lee
Charlie Lane … Jefferson Worth
Paul McAllister … The Seer
E.J. Ratliffe … James Greenfield
Clyde Cook … Tex
Erwin Connelly … Pat Mooney
Ed Brady … McDonald
Sammy Blum … Horace Blanton
Fred Esmelton … George Cartwright
Bill Patton … Little Rosebud

Runtime: 89 min.

Memorable lines:

Barbara Worth: “Mr. Holmes, do you realize that to all these people you are an angel from heaven?”
Holmes: “I’m really only the engineer for a soulless corporation bent on making big money quick.”

Holmes, upon meeting Barbara Worth: “Now I know why they call it God’s country.”

Holmes to Barbara: “You’re wasting yourself here, Miss Worth — like an orchid in a bucket of sand.”
Barbara: “You don’t know the desert as I do. It’s beautiful.”

Holmes to Abe Lee: “This hell-hole will never be anything but a graveyard. You could see it, if your brains weren’t fried.”
Abe: “Maybe we ain’t got the brains. Maybe you ain’t got the guts.”