Curtain Call

At the Bar None Cafe, a dreary dot on the vast prairie, Cal and Sharon Bowman have tried desperately to hang on to a run-down business begun by Cal's grandmother, who still lives above the kitchen. For Sharon, the cafe has become a dead end, a symbol of her useless existence in a lonely hamlet. When an oil company suddenly offers to buy the building, she eagerly convinces Cal to sell. But for Grams the cafe is her only link to the past. She prowls from table to table reminiscing about her early days as an actress with a family troupe that played mining camps. She's decorated the peeling walls of the cafe with posters of her stage triumphs and can still perform scene after scene. When Cal finally breaks the news of the sale to her, Grams flatly refuses to leave. When the new owner and his lawyer come to close the deal, Grams shows that she's lost none of her fight as she plays the most important—and triumphant—scene of her life, and the result is an affirmative and theatrical climax.