In The Great McGinty, the story opens in a dimly lit bar where McGinty, a bartender, begins to share his life story with a group of patrons. The atmosphere is thick with cigarette smoke and the tension of desperate lives. McGinty introduces us to a cast of characters, including a sad young man named Thompson, who is on the verge of taking his own life due to his own criminal misdeeds. McGinty, however, has a different tale to tell—one of how he rose from the depths of poverty to become a state governor.