Virginia City

Virginia City is a 1940 American Western film directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Errol Flynn, Miriam Hopkins, Randolph Scott, and a mustachioed Humphrey Bogart in the role of the real-life outlaw John Murrell. Based on a screenplay by Robert Buckner, the film is about a Union officer who escapes from a Confederate prison and is sent to Virginia City from where his former prison commander is planning to send five million dollars in gold to Virginia to save the Confederacy. The film premiered in its namesake, Virginia City, Nevada. The film was shot in black and white (sepiatone). Plot Union officer Kerry Bradford stages a daring escape from Confederate Libby Prison run by the commandant, Vance Irby. Bradford reports to Union headquarters and is immediately sent to Virginia City, a Nevada mining town, to find out where $5,000,000 in gold that Southern sympathizers plan to ship to the tottering Confederacy is being kept. On the westbound stagecoach, he meets and falls in love with the elegant Julia Hayne who, unbeknown to him, is in fact a dance-hall entertainer and a rebel spy, sent by Jefferson Davis to assist in the transfer of the gold by wagon train. Also on the stagecoach is the legendary John Murrell, leader of a gang of "banditos", travelling as a gun salesman. Before he and his gang can rob the stage, Bradford gets the drop on Murrell, who is forced to send his men away. When the stage reaches Virginia City, Julia gives Bradford the slip and heads off to warn Captain Irby, who is now managing the gold-smuggling operation, that Bradford is in town. Bradford follows Irby to the rebels' hideout behind a false wall in a blacksmith's shop, but the gold is moved before he arrives. The Union garrison is called out to patrol the roads to prevent any wagons from leaving town. While Irby is meeting with the sympathetic town doctor, Murrell shows up looking for someone to set his broken arm. Irby offers Murrell $10,000 to have his banditos attack the garrison, which will force the Union soldiers guarding the roads to come to its defense. While the soldiers are busy, Irby's rebels will smuggle the gold out in the false bottoms of their wagons. First Irby needs to take care of Bradford. He uses Julia to arrange a meeting between the two men, and then takes Bradford prisoner, intending to return him to prison.