Goin’ to Town 1935

Cleo Borden is a charismatic saloon singer out West who unexpectedly gains a fortune when her cattle-rustling boyfriend, Buck Gonzales, dies on the eve of their wedding and leaves her a sizable inheritance. With money in hand, she sets her sights on a handsome Brit named Edward Carrington, who is busy surveying the oil wells on her property, and she spends the rest of the tale trying to win him over, having placed a high-stakes bet on the outcome. He regards her as “Crude oil,” which sparks her determination to reinvent herself, and she proclaims, in a bold moment, that she will “become a lady if it kills me!”

“become a lady if it kills me!”

She dives into flamboyant schemes to prove herself, including throwing an opera night and stepping into the lead of a scene from Samson and Delilah, a performance that tests the limits of her growing social ambitions. The story then carries her to Buenos Aires, where she encounters Ivan Valadov, a Russian millionaire with a mistress in Mrs. Crane Brittony. The pair engage in a regal bet over a pair of racing horses, which Borden triumphs, cementing her place in the social whirl—at least for the moment.

A further twist arrives when Fletcher Colton, listed as Fletcher Colton in the credits, the Brittony family’s relation, offers her a title and a path into a society-filled life, implying a loveless marriage in Southampton. Carrington makes a reappearance, returning to see her now bearing the new title of Earl of Stratton, a development that unsettles the old guard. Mrs. Brittony, never one to back down, hatches a plan to humiliate Borden and disrupt the marriage, but the scheme spirals into tragedy: Colton dies after a scuffle with the paid agent Ivan Valadov, and evidence initially points to Borden.

In a turn of justice, she is exonerated, clearing the road to a genuine partnership with Carrington. The film closes on a classic melodrama beat, with a brisk, socially acceptable ending: the union of Lord and Lady Stratton, captured in a final tableau that hints at stability after a whirlwind of ambition, love, bets, and class climbing.