Plot

While awaiting the train to Broadway, Nell Baxter meets the leading man of a repertory company to whom she confides her ambitions. Upon arriving in the city, Nell attracts the lascivious eye of stage manager David Montieth, who eventually gives her the starring role in a play with the expectation that he will be favored with her affections. Nell, however, has fallen in love with playwright Paul Neihoff. On the afternoon that the show is to open, Montieth learns of Nell's romance and cancels the show. Nell goes to Montieth's apartment to plead with him to open the show, and he consents after setting Nell's virtue as the price of her ambition. When he attempts to collect, Nell stabs him and rushes to Neihoff's apartment. The playwright tells her to go to the theater as if nothing has happened, writes a letter confessing that he killed the manager, and then takes an overdose of a drug and dies. Word comes to Nell after the second act that Neihoff has sacrificed himself, and in the last act, she substitutes a real dagger for the fake one and stabs herself to death. It has all been a story, however, concocted by the leading man to cure Nell of her infatuation with the footlights, and no one has died.

Nell Baxter's friends and neighbors declared that fame and fortune awaited her behind the footlights. Stealing away from home, Nell made her way to the railroad station and there came upon a traveling theatrical company. To one of the men she confided her ambition. It is late summer on Broadway when managers are selecting the players for their productions. An amateur from a small country town approaches the stage door of one of the big theaters and asks if there is any chance of her securing employment. It so happens that the ingenue of the company then rehearsing has sent word to the management that she has married and determined to leave the stage. The manager of the company sees Nell and decides that she shall have the part. There is a playwright who has tried without success to have this manager produce one of his plays. The leading lady, in love with the author, has tried her own wiles upon the manager but has failed to accomplish the coveted purpose. Nell succeeds so well with the small role that has been assigned her that the manager, in pressing his attentions upon her, promises that he will advance her upon the stage as a return for her affections. She has met the impoverished playwright and has fallen in love with him, and in the circumstances, it is she who is again chosen to urge the manager to produce the playwright's work. Aiming to advance himself further in the good graces of Nell, the manager agrees to produce the play and give the leading role to her. Meanwhile, the leading lady, who has formerly basked in the good graces of the manager, becomes jealous of Nell and plans vengeance. When the author is in Nell's dressing room, rehearsing a love scene in his play that he wishes to be acted with precision, the jealous woman brings the manager to the dressing room door and discloses Nell and the playwright in affectionate embrace. Angered, the manager declares that the production shall then and there be abandoned.. The playwright, his constitution undermined by dissipation, feels the shock of disappointment. He goes to his apartment and sends for a doctor. The doctor gives him a stimulant, with the warning that an overdose would be fatal. When Nell realizes that her ambition to "triumph" upon the stage has been frustrated, she goes to the manager's apartments to plead that he shall reconsider. The opening performance has been set for that night, and Nell pleads with the manager to let the show go on. He consents after setting his own price upon the girl's ambition. When he attempts to bind the bargain, the girl stabs and kills him. Then she descends to the apartments of the playwright and makes a confession of her crime. Before being killed the manager has telephoned to his stage director that the performance shall proceed, and now the young playwright begs the girl to go on with the play and settle for her crime afterwards. She leaves for the theater, the playwright calls up the police, confesses the crime of murder over the telephone, takes the overdose of stimulant that kills him and the two dead men are found exactly as the circumstances have been telephoned to the police. At the theater the climax of the play is approaching. Nell senses that something has gone wrong with the playwright and overhears the truth when two members of the company are discussing the tragedy. The curtain is up; it is time for the big scene of the play and to make the premier a success for the dead author's sake, the girl heroically goes on and attains her longed-for triumph. But the thunders of applause fall upon deaf ears; the girl has stabbed herself as a climax of the "big scene" and dies while the bravos of the audience resound through the theater.