Alimony Madness
Cast & Crew
Breezy Eason
Helen Chandler
Leon Waycoff
Edward Earle
Charlotte Merriam
Blanche Friderici
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
The defense lawyer for Joan Thurman, on trial for the murder of her husband John's first wife Eloise, presents his case to the jury in his summary: Eloise tells John, a successful young architect, that she is tired of him because he does not like her expensive Pekingese dog and that she only married him for his money. Because he loves her, John agrees to a divorce and to pay $1,000 a month in alimony. Eloise's attorney, Joel Mason, arranges to have his secretary's roommate, Joan Armstrong, an out-of-work stenographer, act as a co-respondent. When Joan goes to meet John, he feels that she is too fine to get implicated in the affair and tries to hide her when Mason, Eloise and a private detective arrive, but Joan comes forth and the divorce proceeds. After John's wealthy patron, Mrs. Van, leaves for Europe and the stock market crashes, John has trouble making the alimony payments. Ironically, John is forced to serve time in the Alimony Delinquent's Jail, which he earlier designed. After Joan reads about his predicament, she contacts her former employer, attorney Dennis O'Shea, who gets John freed on a technicality. Joan goes to work for John, and soon they fall in love, marry and have a child. Despite scrimping to make the alimony payments, John is again delinquent after Mrs. Van returns and withdraws her patronage because of Eloise's slanders about him. On Johnny, Jr.'s first birthday, John notices that the baby's cold has gotten considerably worse. Although he rushes to fill a prescription, he is stopped by a process server, who takes him to court. The twenty-dollar bill that he planned to use for medicine is taken because Mason contends that there is illness at Eloise's home. John is able to buy the prescription on credit, but he returns too late to save his son. Joan rages when she hears his story and goes to Eloise's apartment, where she notices a veterinary bill of twenty dollars for the Pekingese. Joan becomes temporarily insane, and she kills Eloise with a gun that Eloise left lying in the apartment. The weeping jury acquits Joan, and she and John start life anew without further alimony payments.
Director
Breezy Eason
Cast
Helen Chandler
Leon Waycoff
Edward Earle
Charlotte Merriam
Blanche Friderici
Alberta Vaughn
Arthur Loft
Crew
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
Sample ads and posters in the pressbook for this film credit Golden Arrow as presenter. According to the pressbook, Fanchon Royer was Hollywood's only woman producer at the time of this production. Helen Chandler was the wife of British novelist Cyril Hume. Variety commented about this film, "It looks as if the makers hurried this one out of the studio with a view of cashing in quick on the recent anti-alimony splurges in newspapers."
