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This paper examines William S. Hart’s “classic” Western, Hell’ Hinges (1916), in the cultural context of the Progressive Era. A close analysis of the movie’s storyline and characters reveals that Hell’s Hinges can be more accurately labeled a melodrama, a genre which takes big city life as its usual background. Plagued with alcohol and prostitution, the small western town depicted in Hart’s movie resembles the urban jungle many Progressive reformers were determined to moralize. Although the movie ends in a spectacular display of Old Testament vengeance, as was appropriate for the popular, mainly working class audience of the time, it also reflects the complexity of the peculiar spirit of Progressive America, which combined a strong Protestant moral view and more practical reform urges. The chiastic structure of the relations between the main characters (Blaze as the "good badman," Robert as the over-feminized clergyman, his sister Faith as the true redeemer, and Dolly the saloon girl as the temptress) provides a relevant illustration of the shifting moral and cultural codes of the early twentieth century, as the feminization of religious culture, the rise of the New Woman and a reaffirmation of masculine individualism seemed to redefine Victorian America.