Cleared of a crime, gangster Charles Gillette seeks vengeance against Mountain City townspeople who sought to put him behind bars, including Colonel Bogardus, owner of the influential Mountain City World newspaper. Gillette buys the Sentinel, rival to the World, and tries to hire star reporter Ralph Houston to be his editor, but Ralph declines.
Gillette then uses Ralph's girlfriend, Vina Swain, to dig up dirt on his enemies. A story on mayoral candidate Horace Mitchell smears his reputation and results in a suicide. Tod Swain, an editor at the World, chastises Vina for her poor judgment. Gillette then sets out to ruin a department store owner by having henchman Beak McArdle arrange an elevator accident that causes deaths as well as serious injury to Ralph.
Vina's own life is in peril when Gillette then orders McArdle to murder her so she can never tell what she knows. Tod helps her return safely, then tricks Gillette into a confession about the elevator accident. The Sentinel is sold to the town, with a recovered Ralph deciding to run it.
Writing for Night and Day in 1937, Graham Greene gave the film a mildly good review, noting that it gives "the general impression [...] of slow old-fashioned sentiment [whose] result, like lavender, is not unagreeable". Characterizing the film as "a routine film of American newspaper life", Greene gave mixed reactions to the scenes, praising the elevator crash scene but finding himself disappointed by the precious delivery of the final scenes with the daughter speaking of her dead father.[3] A reviewer in The New York Times found the film's portrayal of newspapermen "authentic" and its story "engrossing".[4]
^J.T.M. "The Screen. 'High, Wide and Handsome,' a Story of the Oil Rush, Opens at the Astor--The Paramount's 'Exclusive'." The New York Times, 22 July 1937, p. 15, www.nytimes.com/1937/07/22/archives/the-screen-high-wide-and-handsome-a-story-of-the-oil-rush-opens-at.html?searchResultPosition=2. Accessed 1 Dec. 2020.
