The Lion and the Mouse

Lion and the Mouse, Shirley wrote the book partly in revenge for Ryder's destroying the career of her father, Judge Rossmore (Walter Allen), whose decisions had gone against Ryder's monopolies. But she is also determined to clear her father's name, and to this end allows Ryder's son, Jefferson (Richard Bennett), to court her with neither father nor son realizing she is the Sarah Green who wrote the exposé. The older Ryder asks her to write a book answering Green's charges, and Shirley agrees but insists on having access to all Ryder's papers. When she comes across the papers that clear her father, she confronts the Ryders and discloses her identity. The Henry B. Harris production was the biggest hit of its season (its opening followed closely those of Peter Pan and The Girl of the Golden West, neither of which ran nearly as long), and was seen as a powerful, skillful if contrived, and not very subtly veiled portrait of Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller.