As directed by Frank Borzage (the veteran of silent pictures who directed Janet Gaynor onto the first every Best Actress Oscar), this view of the New York City tenement life shows Joan Crawford with flawless hair but dreary second hand dresses who is determined to get out of the lower east side and find a better life. She marries long-time sweetheart Alan Curtis whom she thinks has the guts to move onto better things but then realizes that he is as shiftless and lazy as her father (Oscar O'Shea) and brother (Leo Gorcey). Having watched her mother (Elisabeth Risdon) struggle with her strength all these years and end up resigned and tired to a life she hates, Crawford becomes enamored of the ambitious Spencer Tracy, a shipping tycoon of questionable morality and realizes that she can't continue to die a slow death, something she sees her mother heading to. Working hard as a model has hardened Crawford into seeing what she wants through the phony glamour of her occupation.
This is a different take on the type of film that usually cast Sylvia Sidney in such parts as Sidney never compromised her morality and always loved someone from her own world. Crawford isn't an amoral character, just more ambitious than those fragile parts Sylvia played in "Street Scene" and "Dead End". The only pairing of Crawford and Tracy, this shows them in a situation that compromised the censors and screams to have been made in the pre-code where the situations could have been a lot dicier. It's obvious whom Crawford will have the chemistry with. The performance of veteran character actress Elisabeth Risdon is excellent, reminding me of tired mothers played by Marjorie Main and Clara Blandick, yet adding more depth and strength in a scene where she confesses her feelings about the men in the family to Crawford.
There's a glamorous modeling show where Crawford is ogled by Tracy while wearing top notch fashions that isn't quite the fashion show that the ladies would attend in "The Women", but it is typical MGM gloss none the less. People always talk about Tracy and Hepburn, and Gable and Crawford, and while Hepburn and Gable never crossed paths, Tracy and Crawford's one teaming shows them a perfect pair. George Chandler has a good small part as a supposed professional boxer who is intimidated by the short in stature Gorcey, basically playing another variation of Slip from "The Bowery Boys" movies.
This is a different take on the type of film that usually cast Sylvia Sidney in such parts as Sidney never compromised her morality and always loved someone from her own world. Crawford isn't an amoral character, just more ambitious than those fragile parts Sylvia played in "Street Scene" and "Dead End". The only pairing of Crawford and Tracy, this shows them in a situation that compromised the censors and screams to have been made in the pre-code where the situations could have been a lot dicier. It's obvious whom Crawford will have the chemistry with. The performance of veteran character actress Elisabeth Risdon is excellent, reminding me of tired mothers played by Marjorie Main and Clara Blandick, yet adding more depth and strength in a scene where she confesses her feelings about the men in the family to Crawford.
There's a glamorous modeling show where Crawford is ogled by Tracy while wearing top notch fashions that isn't quite the fashion show that the ladies would attend in "The Women", but it is typical MGM gloss none the less. People always talk about Tracy and Hepburn, and Gable and Crawford, and while Hepburn and Gable never crossed paths, Tracy and Crawford's one teaming shows them a perfect pair. George Chandler has a good small part as a supposed professional boxer who is intimidated by the short in stature Gorcey, basically playing another variation of Slip from "The Bowery Boys" movies.