The Great Man's Lady

In Hoyt City a statue of the founder, Ethan Hoyt, is unveiled. In the same city a woman of a hundred is living: Hannah Sempler Hoyt. She is in the last old house left among the skyscrapers. A young woman writing a biography persuades her to talk. Hannah goes back to 1848. In that year, still a girl, she met Ethan and on a sudden impulse the two of them eloped. What follows is the effort to build a city from nothing. The gold rush, separations and losses all lie along that road. The film shows the same performer across eighty years. Barbara Stanwyck and Joel McCrea take the leads in William A. Wellman’s American film of 1941.