Synopsis
With an ostentatious flourish Mr. "Lucky" Broad placed a crisp ten-dollar bill in an eager palm outstretched across his folding-table. "The gentleman wins and the gambler loses!" Mr. Broad proclaimed to the world. "The eye is quicker than the hand, and the dealer's moans is music to the stranger's ear." With practised touch he rearranged the three worn walnut-shells which constituted his stock in trade. Beneath one of them he deftly concealed a pellet about the size of a five-grain allopathic pill. It was the erratic behavior of this tiny ball, its mysterious comings and goings, that had summoned Mr. Broad's audience and now held its observant interest. This audience, composed of roughly dressed men, listened attentively to the seductive monologue which accompanied the dealer's deft manipulations, and was greatly entertained thereby.
About the Author
Rex Ellingwood Beach (September 1, 1877 – December 7, 1949) was an American novelist, playwright, and Olympic water polo player. One novel, The Silver Horde (1909), is set in Kalvik, a fictionalized community in Bristol Bay, Alaska, and tells the story of a down on his luck gold miner who discovers a greater wealth in Alaska's run of salmon (silver horde) and decides to open a cannery. To accomplish this he must overcome the relentless opposition of the "salmon trust," a fictionalized Alaska Packers' Association, which undercuts his financing, sabotages his equipment, incites a longshoremen's riot and bribes his fishermen to quit. The story line includes a love interest as the protagonist is forced to choose between his fiance, a spoiled banker's daughter, and an earnest roadhouse operator, a woman of "questionable virtue." Real life cannery superintendent Crescent Porter Hale has been credited with being the inspiration for The Silver Horde, but it is unlikely Beach and Hale ever met. After success in literature, many of his works were adapted into successful films; The Spoilers became a stage play, then was remade into movies five times from 1914 to 1955, with Gary Cooper and John Wayne each playing "Roy Glennister" in 1930 and 1942, respectively. The Silver Horde was twice made into a movie, as a silent film in 1920 starring Myrtle Stedman, Curtis Cooksey and Betty Blythe and directed by Frank Lloyd; and a talkie version The Silver Horde (1930) that starred Jean Arthur, Joel McCrea, and Evelyn Brent and was directed by George Archainbaud. Beach occasionally produced his films and also wrote a number of plays to varying success. In 1926 Beach was paid $25,000 to write a brochure entitled The Miracle of Coral Gables to promote the real estate development of Coral Gables, a planned city. In 1949, two years after the death of his wife Edith, Beach committed suicide in Sebring, Florida at the age of 72. In 2005, when the home Beach lived in was remodeled, a bullet was found in the wall, believed to be the bullet that ended his life. Beach served as the first president of the Rollins College Alumni Association. He and his wife are buried in front of the Alumni house. Beach, and his most famous novel, were commemorated in 2009 by the naming of a public pedestrian/bicycle trail in Dobbs Ferry, NY, a former place of residence. The trail is called "Spoilers Run"
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