When I'd seen the name of this movie, I'd always thought it was a musical. Like "The Harvey Girls." It's not. It's a pudding that overcooked, hit the kitchen ceiling, and was pried off and cobbled together. No music and not a period piece but thoroughly improbable.
It starts with patriarch James Woods telling the eldest of his three daughters, a small child who grows to be Barbara Stanwyck, that she must maintain the family name and home.
We thus think it is going to be a historical intergenerational tale. And it is, for a brief time. Then it turns into the story of cold-hearted Stanwyck's fight against lawyer George Brent. Why is she so dead set against him? Well, why else? As we learn in a strange flashback sequence narrated by Stanwyck, she had once thought she could inherit some money (for her sisters as well as herself, of course) by marrying. She hit on someone she took to be a country bumpkin, who was in fact budding lawyer Brent.
Lest anyone think the child they had, a young man of eight or so at the time of the main plot, is -- well, you know ... They had a hasty marriage and during the very short time they were together, he was conceived.
One of her sisters is in love with a painter named Gig Young, who is played by Gig Young. The other sister tries to take him away. Etc., etc.
It is a shrill, unengaging mess -- well enough acted but without a shred of logic or plausibility.
It starts with patriarch James Woods telling the eldest of his three daughters, a small child who grows to be Barbara Stanwyck, that she must maintain the family name and home.
We thus think it is going to be a historical intergenerational tale. And it is, for a brief time. Then it turns into the story of cold-hearted Stanwyck's fight against lawyer George Brent. Why is she so dead set against him? Well, why else? As we learn in a strange flashback sequence narrated by Stanwyck, she had once thought she could inherit some money (for her sisters as well as herself, of course) by marrying. She hit on someone she took to be a country bumpkin, who was in fact budding lawyer Brent.
Lest anyone think the child they had, a young man of eight or so at the time of the main plot, is -- well, you know ... They had a hasty marriage and during the very short time they were together, he was conceived.
One of her sisters is in love with a painter named Gig Young, who is played by Gig Young. The other sister tries to take him away. Etc., etc.
It is a shrill, unengaging mess -- well enough acted but without a shred of logic or plausibility.