The history behind Baby Doe and Horace Tabor is more fascinating than fiction. Abandoned by her husband, pregnant, and working a gold mine alone, Baby Doe meets Horace Tabor, married and twice her age. Tabor, a postmaster and washed-up prospector, strikes it rich, buys dozens of silver mines, and is elected lieutenant governor and U.S. senator. In 1883, he scandalously divorces his wife and marries the beautiful Baby Doe in Washington D.C. with the president in attendance. Though society shuns them, the Tabors live an extravagant and charitable life, until the silver crash of 1893.