The gorgeous Loretta Young is playing the organ in her small town Kansas church when city slicker David Manners pops in and even stays after church to ogle her. He's on his way to California from New York on business, popping into town long enough to try and wrap up part of his business deal before finalizing it on the other side of the country. She's the only child of a very religious woman (Elizabeth Patterson) who must go to an earlier service, because she isn't at the one where Young is playing, and is thus always under the moralistic thumb of a self-righteous woman. After Young stays out until midnight with Manners, she has a confrontation with her mother who reveals some ugly truths, and instantly, she's on the next train to Manhattan. Once there, she learns that Manners is already engaged to wealthy snob Helen Vinson and disappears on both Manners and his kindly doctor friend (George Brent at his most noble), turning up at a lecherous producer's office where she gets a job playing piano at his newest show's rehearsals. With the help of her new friend Una Merkel (outrageous as a cartwheeling flirt), she turns her life around, but producer Louis Calhern obviously has other plans for her, ultimately betraying her which results in a violent demise.
This fast moving pre-code drama is aided by the attractiveness of its three stars (Young, Manners and Brent), with fine support by Merkel, Patterson (quite nasty for a change of pace), Calhern and Vinson. A funny moment in the Kansas sequences has Manners being flirted with by a desperate counter girl who is quite upset when Manners later shows up with Young and makes her indignation unknown. The confrontation scenes between Young and Patterson (and later Young and Calhern) shows that there is a tiger in this small town girl's tank, and she is not going to let anybody mess around with her unless she wants to be messed with. While far from a perfect film, this is still one of the more direct and crisp Warner Brothers "girls gone wild" dramas of the year, and in a year which boasted Barbara Stanwyck, Ruth Chatteron, Kay Francis, Joan Blondell, Glenda Farrell and in her first year at the studio, Bette Davis, Young is certainly the most feminine and lovely. I appreciate her in this era more than her overly lady-like characters of the 1940's and 50's because indeed, she was much more identifiable, and in real life wasn't "Atilla the Nun" whom she became later on. Crisp dialog abound ("What's more curious than a woman? Two women!") and solid direction add to the art deco settings (even the country side with its swan-visited pond is gorgeous) and quick moving photography. Definitely a winner, if not a classic.
This fast moving pre-code drama is aided by the attractiveness of its three stars (Young, Manners and Brent), with fine support by Merkel, Patterson (quite nasty for a change of pace), Calhern and Vinson. A funny moment in the Kansas sequences has Manners being flirted with by a desperate counter girl who is quite upset when Manners later shows up with Young and makes her indignation unknown. The confrontation scenes between Young and Patterson (and later Young and Calhern) shows that there is a tiger in this small town girl's tank, and she is not going to let anybody mess around with her unless she wants to be messed with. While far from a perfect film, this is still one of the more direct and crisp Warner Brothers "girls gone wild" dramas of the year, and in a year which boasted Barbara Stanwyck, Ruth Chatteron, Kay Francis, Joan Blondell, Glenda Farrell and in her first year at the studio, Bette Davis, Young is certainly the most feminine and lovely. I appreciate her in this era more than her overly lady-like characters of the 1940's and 50's because indeed, she was much more identifiable, and in real life wasn't "Atilla the Nun" whom she became later on. Crisp dialog abound ("What's more curious than a woman? Two women!") and solid direction add to the art deco settings (even the country side with its swan-visited pond is gorgeous) and quick moving photography. Definitely a winner, if not a classic.