Sarah and Son 1930

Sarah Storm Ruth Chatterton is an Austrian immigrant who teams up with Jim Grey Fuller Mellish Jr. to chase a life on the vaudeville stage. Months after their debut, they have a baby boy, Bobby Philippe De Lacy, but no steady income, and Jim shows little interest in finding work or supporting the family. After a fight, Jim tries to secure a loan from John Ashemore Gilbert Emery, a wealthy businessman, who denies the request but confesses envy at Jim’s fatherhood, since his wife cannot bear children.

On the heels of that rejection, Jim enlists with the Marines for four years and spends time drinking. Upon returning, he quarrels again with Sarah and then disappears with their son, intending to hand him over to the Ashmores. The heartbroken Sarah takes up singing with an itinerant musician, Cyril Belloc [William Stack].

Two years later, Cyril and Sarah perform for WWI veterans in a hospital. Among the beds of wounded soldiers, she finds Jim near death, who begs forgiveness and reveals that he gave their son to the Ashmores. When she pleads to see if the boy is hers, John Ashmore refuses and threatens to have her committed; their attorney, Howard Vanning Fredric March, is initially wary but sympathetic. Sarah leaves America for Germany to pursue her singing career.

Years pass; Sarah becomes an internationally famous opera singer and returns to New York to perform. She reconnects with Howard Vanning, proclaims she is no longer afraid of the Ashmores’ threats, and demands to meet the boy, insisting that a birthmark will prove that he is her son. Bobby, now thirteen, is unhappy under the Ashmores’ protective care and shares with his uncle Howard a desire to be self-sufficient. To forestall the meeting, Mrs. Ashmore presents the deaf-mute servant’s son as a stand-in, hoping to fool Sarah. Meanwhile, Bobby secretly escapes to the summer house of his uncle Howard. Howard, who has fallen in love with Sarah, brings her to the house unaware of Bobby’s presence and engineers a final encounter between mother and son.