The Villain Still Pursued Her 1940

Mary Wilson Anita Louise lives with her mother, Mrs. Wilson Margaret Hamilton, in a small cottage, unable to keep up with the mortgage. Mr. Cribbs Alan Mowbray, a mustachioed villain with cloak and cane, appears at the door and spells out the Wilsons’ precarious finances, hinting that Mary might have to seek work in New York. Cribbs hides in the shadows while waiting for Mary to pass, and she slips away, taking cover as well.

A young man named Edward Middleton Richard Cromwell stops to mend an injured bird, and Mary is drawn to him at once. They fall in love, and Mary marries Middleton, who preaches an alcohol-free life. Yet Cribbs taints the happiness by tricking him into drinking rum, and Mary’s senses tell her something is wrong as she detects the scent on his breath.

Eight years slip by. Middleton has become a drunk, hoarding hidden bottles and downing an entire bottle in ten seconds. He returns home to Mary and their daughter, and in a moment of reckless bitterness, he chops down the cherry tree his father had planted years before.

In New York in 1850, Middleton wanders the streets as a drunk, while Cribbs schemes to drag him into heavier crime. Mary, now living in poverty with their daughter Julia Middleton Diane Fisher after her mother’s death, stands strong against his schemes. Cribbs again tries to press himself on Mary, but she is saved by the sturdy William Dalton Buster Keaton as trouble closes in.

Back in the city, Middleton narrowly avoids arrest for drunkenness, helped along by a chaotic but comic pie fight that lightens the moment. He meets the philanthropic Frederick Healy Hugh Herbert, who urges him to take a sobriety pledge. Cribbs has Middleton forge Healy’s signature on a $5,000 check and sends a boy to the bank to cash it, but Dalton uncovers the fraud and brings Cribbs’s crimes into the open.

In the climactic turn, Cribbs is exposed for his tangled crimes, and Middleton earns a certificate of sobriety, signaling a hard-won redemption for a man who fought to protect his family and reclaim their lives.