What happens
In San Francisco in 1852, Mary Rutledge arrives to find Dan Morgan, who has just been shot dead in a gambling dispute. She takes work at Louis Schumacher's gambling house, where she becomes known as the Swan and runs the roulette wheel. Schumacher gives her expensive gifts and presses her for affection, while she grows hard and cynical about the gold she pursues. Her life is unsettled when she meets Jim Carmichael, a young man returning from the gold fields, who sees a kinder woman in her than she shows the world. This episode of the Screen Guild Theater presents Barbary Coast, starring Charles Bickford as Louis Schumacher and Mary Astor as the Swan, with the original broadcast dated June 24, 1946.
San Francisco, 1852, a gambling house during the gold rush era
Characters: Mary Rutledge / the Swan, Louis Schumacher, Dan Morgan, Jim Carmichael, Louisa Mullins, Sandy Ferguson, McCavish, Knuckles D'Cobie
Listen for: Louis Schumacher's threats toward the Swan and the rainy meeting with Jim Carmichael
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.