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Jim Stainton is a middle-aged prospector who finally struck rich after years of trying. He goes to New York to find a wife and falls in love with Muriel Stannard at first eight.
There are two issues. Firstly she is only eighteen. Secondly she is the orphan daughter of the woman who spurned him in his youth. Plenty of psychological mill for the grist there you might think?
Kaufman certainly attempted to make something of the tension between the ages of the two lovers. Can the crusty old miner and the beautiful young orphan make their May to December romance work, or will it hit the rocks when 'youth calls to youth' when Muriel meets a charming Austrian diplomat while the couple are holidaying.
Or more importantly, who cares? Two desperately dull leafs with hopelessly muddled motivations didn't help. The author must have been a little misanthropic too because just about every other character was dislikeable to some degree or another.
As for the mother/daughter thing, Kaufman needn't have bothered introducing it because he never took it anywhere.