A restless young man travels west, encountering adventure, romance, and danger.
Ned Thacker, through prenatal suggestion, is born in Kansas with the spirit of D'Artagnan, of Gascony, and, naturally, his gallantries are very much misunderstood by maids and matrons of today, but when he falls in love with Dorothy Morane it takes something more than a millionaire rival to head him off, and it takes even more than a half-crazed Indian guide and the face of the Grand Canyon to keep him from the lady of his choice; not even her mother can do that.—Moving Picture World synopsis
A young man grows restless living in a small Kansas town, dreaming of the adventures of the Three Musketeers. So in hopes of becoming a modern D'Artagnan, he mounts his steed (a Model T Ford) and sets out across the West in search of excitement and adventure.—Jim Beaver <[email protected]>
Although the last half of this film was previously considered lost, it has been found and will be available on DVD and TCM in 2008. The film starts with a tongue-in-cheek flashback with Fairbanks as D'Artagnan (with broad winks at the audience), fighting and defeating a tavern-full of swordsmen just to return a mysterious lady's handkerchief. Through a lap-dissolve, d'Artagnan becomes the modern Kansan Ned Thacker, who was born during a tornado and whose mother read him swashbuckling novels while in the womb. After several episodes where Ned gets into trouble trying to defend women (and a cute cameo by Zasu Pitts), we meet Marjorie Daw, whose mother wants her to marry the rich sleazeball Forrest Vandeteer. They run into trouble on a cross-country automobile trip, and are rescued by Fairbanks when he converts his Ford into a railcar to cross a desert washout. At the El Tovar hotel, we meet the villainous Navajo Chin-de-dah, who lives in a secret cliff-house deep in the Grand Canyon, who leads Forrest and Marjorie to his lair with "forced marriage" on his mind. With the assistance of one of Chin-de-dah's henchmen, Ned Thacker descends the cliffs on a rope and effects a rescue. While the villain is a very unfortunate Indian stereotype, the footage of the Grand Canyon and Canyon de Chelly is spectacular, and taken in the spirit it was intended, this is a fun, somewhat carelessly constructed romp, and a good example of why Douglas Fairbanks was so popular. In the surviving material shown at the Buster Keaton Festival, some confusion is caused when Forrest Vandeteer's name changes to Forrest Barris part way through, probably because of a difference in the source material.
