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The Old West must not have been a very nice place. It was violent, dirty, undernourished, disease-ridden, cursed with alcoholism and venereal disease, and thickly populated with varmits human and otherwise. It was no place for a woman - not even the two kinds of women most familiar in Western movies, schoolmarms and hookers.
In the opening scenes of The Ballad of Little Jo, a young woman is discovering this for herself. Cast out by her wrathful family after giving birth out of wedlock, Little Jo has escaped to the West like to many pariahs before her. But her dress, bonnet and parasol are like red flags to the cowboys along the trail, who can guess she ain t no schoolmarm. Abused and mistreated, she accepts a ride from a stranger and finds herself sold into bondage. Escaping, she realizes there is only one course for her.