The scene in which Dr. Stevens regains her purpose in life is quite startling. Called to the rescue when her janitor's small son swallows a safety pin, she saves the day by removing a hairpin and poking it down the child's throat to remove the offending object. "Wonder what a man would have done with this," the character muses. "What, indeed?" asks Jeanine Basinger in her book A Woman's View. "Without hairpins - without fashion - he would have been lost."
By the end of the 1930s, Francis had lost her fan base and her prestige at Warner Bros., where a less glamorous but more volatile actress named Bette Davis began getting all the plum parts and studio attention. Finishing out her Warners contract in ignominious B-movies, Francis did nothing to salvage her once-glorious career. "I can't wait to leave Hollywood," she said in an interview. "I want to get fat, I want to do nothing. I want to sit on my back porch in a rocker and not even think."
Producer: Hal B. Wallis
Director: Lloyd Bacon
Art Direction: Esdras Hartley
Costume Design: Orry-Kelly
Screenplay: Rian James, Robert Lord (from a novel by Virginia Kellogg)
Cinematography: Sidney Hickox
Editing: Ray Curtiss
Music: Leo F. Forbstein, Bernhard Kaun
Cast: Kay Francis (Mary Stevens), Lyle Talbot (Don Andrews), Glenda Farrell (Glenda Carroll), Thelma Todd (Lois Rising), Una O'Connor (Arnell Simmons). BW-72m.
by Roger Fristoe
