The New Klondike

The New Klondike (1926)

Genres - Comedy  |   Release Date - Mar 14, 1926 (USA - Unknown), Mar 14, 1926 (USA)  |   Run Time - 80 min.  |   Countries - United States  |   MPAA Rating - NR
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Synopsis by Hal Erickson

The New Klondike was a satire of two ripe-for-plucking targets: The national baseball craze and the Florida "land boom" of 1925. Thomas Meighan stars as Tom Kelly, a minor-league player who shows up in Florida for spring training, only to be promptly fired by his jealous manager Joe Cooley (J. W. Johnston). Looking for a quick source of income, Kelly agrees to act as the "celebrity endorser" for a Florida real estate firm. Before long all of his former teammates have become investors, which has a bizarre effect on their game: at one point, one of the ballplayers hits a homer, then stops cold while rounding the bases to study a map of his land holdings! Crooked land broker Morgan West (Robert Craig), conspiring with Joe Cooley, sells Kelly some worthless swamp acreage, which immediately causes our hero and his pals to lose all their money. But Kelly manages to recover their savings, whereupon he is appointed manager of the team in Cooley's place. Based on a story by sports humorist Ring Lardner and partly filmed on location in Miami, The New Klondike was successful enough to secure Tommy Meighan a new, long-term contract with Paramount Pictures.

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Keywords

athlete, baseball, con/scam, estate, gangster, help, land, land-scheme, land-war, love, manager, player [sports], property, real-estate, romance, speculation, team