There haven't been many films inspired by a popular song (but there have been others; Bobbie Gentry's 'Ode to Billy Joe' became a film in 1976), and the title of Lionel Barrymore's last film as director had led me to expect another musical; it then starts out seeming to promise a hard-boiled drama set amid the speakeasies. But after the obligatory opening sequence with the camera swooping around the dance hall where Barbara Stanwyck works, Barrymore settles down to instead deliver a weepie in which Alpha Plus female Barbara Stanwyck becomes inexplicably enamoured of Gamma Minus male Monroe Owsley to the extent of marrying him.
Scriptwriter Jo Swerling doesn't give Owsley a single redeeming feature, leaving you torn between wanting to give him a smack for being such an unappreciative pig and her for not giving him that smack herself. Alpha male fairy godfather Ricardo Cortez is frankly far too good be true, his actions implausibly honourable at all times; and Stanwyck is such a doormat I'm sure he was capable of better (ironically she was at the time herself married to one of the most detested men in show business, Frank Fay). But I guess by the end she'd earned a break.
Scriptwriter Jo Swerling doesn't give Owsley a single redeeming feature, leaving you torn between wanting to give him a smack for being such an unappreciative pig and her for not giving him that smack herself. Alpha male fairy godfather Ricardo Cortez is frankly far too good be true, his actions implausibly honourable at all times; and Stanwyck is such a doormat I'm sure he was capable of better (ironically she was at the time herself married to one of the most detested men in show business, Frank Fay). But I guess by the end she'd earned a break.