Dynamite Smith

Charles Ray stars as Gladstone Smith, a mild-mannered book reviewer for a San Francisco newspaper. When there's a big to do on the waterfront all the reporters rush out to cover it but then a report of a murder comes in and the editor is forced to send Ray. We next meet the killer (Wallace Beery) who runs a saloon where he displays his abused wife (Bessie Love) on stage. She's pregnant and terrified but agrees to talk to Ray with an idea of escaping Beery. But Beery catches on and the two flee for Alaska.

Beery eventually tracks them down and finds the wife dead and Ray installed running a newspaper and something of a local hero for helping save some people who were snowed in. There's another woman now (Jacqueline Logan) who's interested in the baby and Ray. Eventually Ray is forced to man up and devise a plan to get rid of Beery. It's a hell of a plan.

Ray and Beery are excellent and Bessie Love is sensational as the pathetic wife. A long-lost film discovered in an 8mm print in a private collection.