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Maggie Warren (Marie Dressler) is the matriarch of a banking family who has run the Warren Bank for years, until she turns it over to her son John (Norman Foster) to run, following his marriage to Helen (Anita Page). Maggie and Helen's mother Lizzie (Polly Moran) don't really get along that well, but they tolerate each other -- barely -- for the sake of the children and grandchildren. Then comes the stock market crash, and the Great Depression, and the wave of bank failures -- and a rumor that starts a run on Maggie's bank, just as her son has lost all of the personal bonds, with which she had always secured the depositors' holdings against such an emergency, in a get-rich-quick scheme that collapsed. It takes every bit of personal persuasiveness that Maggie can muster, along with a lot of luck, to keep the bank afloat, and Lizzie -- whose own holdings may have gone up in smoke with the rest of the bank's assets -- won't stop needling her.