Upon returning home to his small town after wandering the countryside, Dan Preston finds novelist Shirley Haddon renting his house. Arrested as an intruder, Dan is thrown in jail, where he meets Picardy Max, a mongrel dog who has been sentenced to die by Robert Mabrey, Dan’s former brother-in-law. Meanwhile, Shirley learns that Dan abandoned his law practice to become a vagabond after being deserted by his bride, snobbish Marian Mabrey. Still holding a grudge against the Mabreys, Dan rescues Max from the pound and takes him to live in his room above Shirley’s barn. Discovering that Max has an aptitude for performing as a guard dog, Dan becomes obsessed with training him in order to enter him in an upcoming show against the purebred owned by Robert Mabrey. Things look bleak for Max, however, when Crack Williams, a vicious drunk who hates the dog, is killed by a crazed animal and Robert accuses Max of his murder. When Robert insists that the sheriff shoot Max, Dan returns to his law practice in order to defend his dog. In court, Dan defends the dog’s character, and when a carnival employee testifies that the carnival’s killer leopard escaped on the night of the murder, Max is found innocent. Max then demonstrates his noble character when Marian Mabrey is kidnapped and he tracks down the kidnappers and rescues her. Brought together by Marian’s peril, Robert and Dan shake hands, and with his vendetta now settled, Dan begins life anew with Shirley. More on Wikipedia or Mubi
Watch Almost a Gentleman (1939)
