oleeb This is an interesting story and quite progressive for it's time. I've noticed that a couple of previous user reviews are inaccurate in terms of what goes on in the story. Robert Taylor is a spoiled aristocrat who loses his estate and lifestyle in the slave state of Marylan and for the first time in his life is forced to seek work. He is attracted to a beautiful Boston woman who owns a stagecoach line in western Maryland (Cumberland). He is arrogant and spurns the love interest who suggests he find work and himself heads west to Cumberland where he turns down a job working for the new B & O Railroad and ends up in jail after a bar fight. He is bailed out by Wallace Beery's character who runs the stage coach line and also profits on the side by using the line's wagons to spirit fugitive slave to freedom in nearby Pennsylvania. Unbehknownst to Beery, the man he thinks is an abolitionist running the slaves to freedom is actually reselling them into slavery in the south and murdering those slaves he cannot sell. This complicated tale becomes more complicated when the love interest arrives in Cumberland to "inspect" her stage coach line and finds that Robert Taylor is in jail and Wallace Beery has paid his bail in exchange for 3 months free labor on the stagecoach line. Taylor and Beery don't like one another at all and clash throughout the build of the movie even gettng into two fist fights. Talyor learns that the stage coach line's wagons are being used to resell the slaves who think they are headed to freedom and exposes it believing Beery's character is in on the heinous crime being perpetrated. In the end Taylor's efforts reveal the true nature of the man posing as an abolitionist but really selling the slaves back into slavery and the conflict between himself and Beery is resolved and in the bargain he gets the girl too. After all, it is Hollywood. Very interesting movie on numerous fronts including the slavery issue and it's many intriguting/horrifying facets, watching the very young Robert Taylor in action as a dashing young man who transforms from dilletente into an honorable , courageous man and to see Beery portraying a bigger than life ruffian who, though out for himself, is also a decent human being who wants to help slaves get to freedom. Definitely worth watching.

ResoluteGrunt Perhaps a little historical perspective might assist some of today's viewers of this film. (Those viewing the film in 1939 would have been naturally much more knowledgeable of that history than most viewers today.) The film "Stand Up And Fight" (USA, 1939) depicts a fictional story within a complex and multi-faceted historical background. The story is set in 1844 Cumberland Maryland, which became a key east-west point along the westward settler route through the Appalachian Mountains, and a key north-south point along the underground railroad assisting escaped slaves -- when the B&O Railroad opened in 1842, the nation's first Telegraph lines went operational, and the C&O Canal opened in 1850 -- all using rights of way along the same Potomac River that flows past Cumberland and on down past Washington DC.Within this context the story concerns a pre-Civil War racket involving the capture and reselling of fugitive slaves in a key border location between abolitionist North and slavery South just as the railroad was beginning to compete hard against the stagecoach and wagon trains, and the canal was about to move huge quantities of coal out of the mountains. Most of the laborers building the railroad, the canal, the telegraph and the coal mines were uneducated and impoverished recent escapees from the British-oppressed serf plantation of Ireland.Mid-way along that 120-mile Potomac River route between Cumberland and Washington is strategic Harper's Ferry, where the Shenandoah river meets the Potomac and where John Brown's Raid on an armory in 1859 began to galvanize large portions of the nation's public opinion on each side of the slavery/secession issue. At the time of Brown's raid, Harper's Ferry was in the big slavery (Confederate) state of Virginia, which was also the state just across the river in Cumberland in the abolitionist (Union) state of Maryland.The American Civil War began in April 1961. West Virginia became a state a few months later following the Wheeling Conventions of 1861, in which abolitionist delegates from 30 northwestern Virginia counties decided to break away from Virginia. West Virginia immediately became a key Civil War border state and was formally admitted to the Union in June 1863. West Virginia was the only state to form by separating from a Confederate state, the first to separate from any state since Maine separated from Massachusetts in 1820.The north-south terrain of the Appalachian Mountains is what enabled General Lee to move a huge Confederate army through the Shenandoah all the way north into Pennsylvania to meet a similar huge Union army at Gettysburg – far behind Northern "lines" – during the first three days of July in 1863.

Martha Wilcox This film probably would have been better if Robert Taylor was pitted against Charles Bickford rather than Wallace Berry. I didn't believe their confrontation, but I do believe that if Taylor was up against Bickford then their confrontation would be believable. Taylor redeems himself by demanding that enslaved African-Americans be sold as a family rather than splitting them up. The film would have been better if we had an enslaved African-American character that we could identify with. The fugitive African-American is too old to be sold as a house slave and is in danger of being killed off as he is unsaleable. Taylor befriends him and we have the germ of an intimate acquaintanceship. This subject matter was dealt with better in 'Roots'.

Michael Bo Cynical Southern gentleman Blake Cantrell (Robert Taylor) is forced to sell his plantation and seek employment with a stagecoach company run by Captain Starkey (Wallace Beery) and owned by lovely Susan (Florence Rice). But is the company actually illegally transporting slaves? And can a leopard, the cavalier Blake, actually change its spots?I didn't expect much from this movie, and was thoroughly and positively surprised by the sharp writing and ebullient acting, and contrary to many A-movies of its day its aim is no way an aesthetic 'arty' one. Made in 1939, this movie addresses all sorts of controversial issues, and they have a way of taking you by surprise along the way. The movie is really about abolitionism and treats its subject with remarkable subtlety, although why and how the lynch-mob, the one that we encounter in the last third of the film, goes after white man Starkey is never made quite clear. Cantrell's gradual moral reform is well-explained and plausible, not least because of Taylor's warmth and humanity in the part. Yes, he is handsome, but here it is almost besides the point. Wallace Beery has a field day with the larger-than-life captain, very cleverly balancing on the edge of buffoonery but with plenty of edge and ambiguity.See it, it makes a deep impression.