Nobody wrote better screen soap operas than Lenore Coffee, and she introduces some surprisingly modern notions of being-a-kept-woman in this pre-Code star vehicle for Joan Crawford, in her ambitious-gal-from-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks phase. To escape the numbing mediocrity of her small-town box factory and unappealing suitor (Wallace Ford), she decamps to the Big Apple and soon meets up-and-coming lawyer-politician Clark Gable. Gable was 30 and unpolished, and isn't quite convincing as a man about town still smarting from a disastrous first marriage; ten years later he'd have been ideal. The camera loves Crawford, and Coffee is refreshingly nonjudgmental about the affair the pair pursues, though a couple of odd quirks pop up in its telling. To steer gossips away, the pair pretends she's a widow, which seems not only unnecessary but pointless; how is this going to throw anyone off their scent? And though she's clearly a kept woman, when old boyfriend Ford visits her and learns The Truth, she assures him there's nothing dirty going on; either she's lying or this is a very peculiar mistress relationship. It's swift and breezy with terse dialog, and though the 11th-hour plot turnabout is as unconvincing as every commenter says it is, one is entertained up to the end.
