Faithless
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
Harry Beaumont
Tallulah Bankhead
Robert Montgomery
Hugh Herbert
Maurice Murphy
Louise Closser Hale
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Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
Carol Morgan, the spoiled daughter of a wealthy New York banker, refuses to accept the fact that she no longer has any money because the Depression has forced her late father's bank into receiveorship. Carol is in love with Bill Wade, an advertising man whom she wants to marry, but who doesn't want to live on her money. Not realizing her true financial position, she thinks his $20,000 a year salary is an impossible amount on which to live, and they break their engagement. A few weeks later, when Mr. Carter, her financial advisor, tells her that everything is really gone, she goes to Bill, but learns that he has lost his job because his company is bankrupt. Faced with the possibility of poverty, she still refuses to marry Bill, who doesn't understand why she values money above love. While Bill goes to Chicago for another job, Carol goes to Florida to live off some of her rich friends. Some time later, after moving from friend to friend, she signs a promissory note for $1,000 to Mr. Peter M. Blainey, with whom she is staying, and from whose social-climbing wife Carol accepts $1,500 so that the papers will print a story that she is their guest. When Mrs. Blainey throws Carol out, Mr. Blainey suggests that she teach him to be a gentleman. She refuses, but before she leaves he gives her $1,000. There are no strings attached to his gift, but Blainey knows that she will be back for more. She soon becomes his mistress, even though she is disgusted by him. One night, while she and Blainey are drinking, Bill comes to see her, and Blainey lets him know what their relationship is. Heartbroken when Bill leaves, Carol walks out. After desperately trying to find work, Carol winds up selling her shoes to her landlady for a dollar and one week's room rent. One night, in a cheap restaurant, she runs into Bill, now working as a truck driver. Bill still loves her and they marry. Bill loses his job when the company goes bankrupt, then, after four months in and out of work, he gets employment at a trucking company. After being injured on his first day in an accident caused by strikers, Bill can no longer work, and a desperate Carol turns to prostitution to earn enough to buy medicine to save his life. One night she runs into Bill's younger brother Tony, who thinks she is a tramp and turns her in to the police. Carol begs the policeman not to take her to jail because of Bill's illness and the kind-hearted man gets her a job as a waitress when she promises not to hustle again. Several weeks later, after Bill has regained some of his strength, Tony comes to see him and tells him about that night, unaware that Bill and Carol are married. When Carol comes home, she sees what has happened and tells the shaken Bill that she will go away, but he won't let her go because he knows the sacrifices she has made for him. She finally agrees to stay and Bill tells her that he just got a new advertizing job for $60 a week.
Director
Harry Beaumont
Cast
Tallulah Bankhead
Robert Montgomery
Hugh Herbert
Maurice Murphy
Louise Closser Hale
Anna Appel
Lawrence Grant
Henry Kolker
Sterling Holloway
Charles Williams
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Film Details
Technical Specs
Articles
Faithless
But a funny thing happened on the way to the screen. Faithless became a victim of the emerging reform movement in Hollywood. The story -a spoiled heiress loses her fortune and, through a series of financial setbacks, is forced to prostitute herself for her husband - was originally intended as a tart social comedy that poked fun at the idle rich. After the Hays Office demanded script changes, Faithless became a moralistic melodrama in which our carefree heroine was made to pay for her crimes against noble American values. A last-minute happy ending was also imposed on the film which justified all the physical and spiritual degradation that Carol had endured with an unintentionally subversive twist denouement.
Despite positive reviews for her work in Faithless, Bankhead wasn't interested in a contract with MGM or a Hollywood career. Louis B. Mayer wouldn't meet her salary demands anyway and realized she was a public relations nightmare due to her offscreen promiscuity. Indeed, Bankhead could be unpredictable, hilarious and uncensored in press interviews like the time she said to a reporter regarding the Code, "I have followed Mr. Hay's advice and have taken up a completely sexless, nun-like, legs-crossed existence." Simply put, Bankhead refused to play the Hollywood game, called it quits and returned to the stage. She wouldn't appear in another film for eleven years - a cameo in Hollywood Canteen (1943). However, you can still get a glimpse of the wit and feistiness Bankhead was famous for in the early scenes of Faithless.
Director: Harry Beaumont
Screenplay: Carey Wilson (based on the story "Tinfoil" by Mildred Cram)
Cinematography: Oliver T. Marsh
Editor: Hugh Wynn
Cast: Tallulah Bankhead (Carol Morgan), Robert Montgomery (Bill Wade), Hugh Herbert (Mr. Blainey), Maurice Murphy (Anthony Wade), Louise Closser Hale (Landlady).
BW-78m.
by Jeff Stafford
Faithless
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
The working title of the film was Tinfoil. According to a news item in Hollywood Reporter, retakes of some scenes were necessary because of problems the picture encountered with British censors. Other news items in Film Daily and Hollywood Reporter noted that M-G-M borrowed Tallulah Bankhead from Paramount for the picture in exchange for a loan-out of Montgomery for another film. Although Maude Eburne was listed as a cast member on an Hollywood Reporter production chart, she was not credited in any review or seen in the viewed print. Greta Meyer and Lilyan Irene were mentioned in pre-production news items as cast members, but their participation in the completed film has not been confirmed. According to a news item in Film Daily on November 27, 1932, this picture was to be Bankhead's last film. She did not make another picture until Stage Door Canteen in 1943, although she appeared on the stage frequently during the period.