Several years before assuming the role of gentle patriarch Judge Hardy in MGM's Andy Hardy series, Lewis Stone was a virile, no-nonsense leading man. Man of Bronze is set in Arizona, where leather-skinned cattleman John Adams (Stone) pays court to the lovely Mary Lawton (Marguerite Clayton). When Mary decides to head Eastward to pursue an art career, John elects to stay behind, where he builds a honeymoon cottage in anticipation of his sweetheart's return. But upon paying a visit to Mary in New York, John finds her cavorting wildly at an uninhibited Greenwich Village soiree. Disillusioned, John returns to Arizona, where, in anticipation of John Wayne in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, he sets fire to his little "love nest" and resigns himself to a lifetime of solemn solitude.
by Hal Erickson
synopsis
