Small-town pitcher Thomas Kelly (Thomas Meighan) is sent to Spring training with a minor league baseball team in Florida, but is fired by its jealous manager, Joe Cooley (Jack W. Johnston). Kelly is then talked into being the celebrity endorser for a Florida real estate firm, and his former teammates invest money in the firm through him. Still jealous of Kelly's popularity, Cooley conspires with crooked broker Morgan West (Robert Craig) to sell Kelly and the investors some worthless swampland. Kelly and his friends lose their money, but Kelly struggles to recoup the losses. He eventually makes a fortune, repays the investors, and is himself appointed team manager in place of Cooley.
Partly filmed on location in Miami, the film is based upon a short story by Ring Lardner and was inspired by both the national baseball craze and the Florida land boom speculation of 1925.[7] The film itself inspired the 1926 Peggy Griffith novel The New Klondike – A Story of a Southern Baseball Training Camp.[8][9] The film proved successful enough to secure Thomas Meighan a long-term acting contract with Paramount.[7]
Reception
The New York Times wrote, "The wild scramble for Florida real estate is served up in a fairly humorous light in Thomas Meighan's latest production, 'The New Klondike,' which is Thomas J. Geraghty's adaptation of a special story by Ring Lardner." The reviewer noted that the film was predictable and not overburdened with suspense, but that it did provide "several amusing incidents concerned with the activities of the realtors and their victims."[1]
^Library of Congress. Copyright Office (1927). Catalog of Copyright Entries. New Series: 1926, Part 1. Volume 23, Part 1 of Catalog of Copyright Entries. New Series. Copyright Office, Library of Congress. pp. 734. The New Klondike - A Story of a Southern Baseball Training Camp.
^Erickson, Hal (1992). Baseball in the Movies: A Comprehensive Reference, 1915–1991. McFarland. p. 223.
^Catalog of Holdings The American Film Institute Collection and The United Artists Collection at The Library of Congress, p. 126 c.1978 by The American Film Institute
