In other words, it's all about scandal and it took two directors to get it done.
In other words, it's combination soap opera, screwball comedy, mother love saga, backstage saga, love story and even a bit of a musical, although Constance Bennett never does sing "Poor Butterfly" for the pesky Sterling Holloway. It starts off with Bennett in court as a corespondent in a scandalous trial, losing her adopted daughter as a result, and then sailing off to Paris with vain mother Jobyna Howland, returning to star in a play ironically called "Rockabye", getting to visit her former daughter thanks to understanding respectable adoptive parents, and being fought over by producer Paul Lukas and playwright Joel McCrea.
With a lack of direction in it's structure struggling plot, it's ironic that two directors (George Cukor and William Fitzmaurice) were at the helm. At her most glamorous, Bennett does get to stretch her acting muscles, but it is the boozy, glamour obsessed Howland who steals the film, vainly comparing her looks to daughter Bennett's as her frozen face barely moves around her lips. It's everything (and more) that made precode so much fun, but simply goes around in circles plotwise, leaving the viewer truly dizzy.
In other words, it's combination soap opera, screwball comedy, mother love saga, backstage saga, love story and even a bit of a musical, although Constance Bennett never does sing "Poor Butterfly" for the pesky Sterling Holloway. It starts off with Bennett in court as a corespondent in a scandalous trial, losing her adopted daughter as a result, and then sailing off to Paris with vain mother Jobyna Howland, returning to star in a play ironically called "Rockabye", getting to visit her former daughter thanks to understanding respectable adoptive parents, and being fought over by producer Paul Lukas and playwright Joel McCrea.
With a lack of direction in it's structure struggling plot, it's ironic that two directors (George Cukor and William Fitzmaurice) were at the helm. At her most glamorous, Bennett does get to stretch her acting muscles, but it is the boozy, glamour obsessed Howland who steals the film, vainly comparing her looks to daughter Bennett's as her frozen face barely moves around her lips. It's everything (and more) that made precode so much fun, but simply goes around in circles plotwise, leaving the viewer truly dizzy.