Over the Hill

Amos Winthrop, owner of the Winthrop newspaper syndicate of "yellow" journals, delights in posing as the patron of ambitious youth, and he appoints Allan Stone as business manager of the Daily Pioneer at Columbia. The Rev. Timothy Neal, compelled to resign his pastorate because of advancing years, and his granddaughter, Esther, arrive in Columbia, where the minister hopes to make a living selling books. The one failure in Amos Winthrop's life is his pampered son, Roy, and the father sends Roy to Columbia to work as a reporter on the staff of the Daily Pioneer. Rev. Neal takes many and varied lessons in the gentle are of book-agenting but success does not come to him and Esther is at her wit's end trying to instruct her grandfather how to approach strangers. Their little store of savings dwindles. Jim Barnes is editor of the Daily Pioneer and he delights in applying big-town methods to a small-town paper. He prints sensational stories and is supported in his methods by young Winthrop. Stone, on the other hand, asserts that scandal about people kills advertising prospects. The owner of Columbia's largest department store is Henry Lawlor, and the Daily Pioneer advertising staff longs to secure Lawlor to an advertising contract. Pneumonia attacks Rev. Neal and he passes away, leaving his granddaughter, Esther, alone in the world. She has met both Allan Stone and Roy Winthrop. The time comes when the only hope of the Daily Pioneer is the Lawlor advertising contract. There is an agreement that if the paper fails to make a stipulated showing before a specified date, Allan Stone and Jim Barnes shall forfeit all claim to their respective shares of stock in said paper. Young Winthrop antagonizes Lawlor and it seems that the contract is lost. He prepares a story dealing with the purported elopement of Lawlor's daughter and the same is set in type. Esther, considering it a "spite story," burns the entire edition of the Daily Pioneer, thus preventing the story from being read. In so doing she earns the gratitude of Lawlor, who gives the paper the advertising patronage. Amos Winthrop, summoned to Columbia, appreciates the foolishness of his son and orders him to leave Columbia and return home where the father can keep an eye on the boy. Stone wins an allotment of stock in the Daily Pioneer and wins Esther for his bride. - IMDb