In August 1928 - while currently the toast of the West End stage - the Home Office attempted to have Talluluh Bankhead deported from Britain on the grounds described in a confidential report by M15 to the Home Secretary "(a) that she is an extremely immoral woman and (b) that in consequence of her association with some Eton boys last term, the latter have had to leave Eton." The report quoted an informant that "she is both a Lesbian and immoral with men" and "bestows her favours 'generously' without payment", had indulged in "indecent and unnatural practices" and that "her 'circle' is a centre of vice patronised by at least one of the most prominent sodomites in London." Tallulah and early 30's Paramount should therefore have been made for each other, but 'My Sin' alas doesn't begin to live up to it's racy, pre-Code title; and both she and director George Abbott soon returned to Broadway.
Filmed at New York's Astoria Studios on Long Island, it starts promisingly enough with her playing Carlotta, singing in a bar in Panama and being pestered for money by a lowlife who had previously tricked her into a fake marriage. A gun goes off in her hotel room, and the creep is found shot dead. Although acquitted owing to the brilliant defense of a young lawyer played by a young Fredric March, Panama is now too hot for her and with her newly adopted whitebread name of Ann Trevor, accompanied with an appropriate new highfalutin accent, her life is now open to a successful new career as an interior designer in New York.
'Ann' is disappointingly bloodless compared to the worldly Carlotta we originally met in Panama, and the remainder of the film plods along until about twenty minutes from the end when - now engaged to a wealthy young blueblood - she encounters a former acquaintance who recognises her as 'Carlotta'. The awkward dinner party that follows is a treat worthy of Hitchcock; enhanced by the fact that it's the one time in the movie that Bankhead looks really glamorous: her hair slicked back and wearing one of those backless early thirties spray-on dresses. But we've known all along that she's going to end up with March in the end, so the film finally stops wasting our time and surrenders to the inevitable.
The presence of an uncredited Eric Blore in the opening sequence bodes well (as does the presence of a young Joseph Calleia), but the film falls disappointingly short of the wit and grit the title and period might have led one to anticipate. Abbott's lacklustre direction fails, for example, to capitalise on Broadway actress Lily Cahill - making an extremely rare film appearance - who is robust and engaging as Ann's cynical workplace buddy; but doesn't get a single close-up. It's interesting though to see a substantially younger-than-usual Harry Davenport as the ghost from Ann's past who reappears to haunt her.
Filmed at New York's Astoria Studios on Long Island, it starts promisingly enough with her playing Carlotta, singing in a bar in Panama and being pestered for money by a lowlife who had previously tricked her into a fake marriage. A gun goes off in her hotel room, and the creep is found shot dead. Although acquitted owing to the brilliant defense of a young lawyer played by a young Fredric March, Panama is now too hot for her and with her newly adopted whitebread name of Ann Trevor, accompanied with an appropriate new highfalutin accent, her life is now open to a successful new career as an interior designer in New York.
'Ann' is disappointingly bloodless compared to the worldly Carlotta we originally met in Panama, and the remainder of the film plods along until about twenty minutes from the end when - now engaged to a wealthy young blueblood - she encounters a former acquaintance who recognises her as 'Carlotta'. The awkward dinner party that follows is a treat worthy of Hitchcock; enhanced by the fact that it's the one time in the movie that Bankhead looks really glamorous: her hair slicked back and wearing one of those backless early thirties spray-on dresses. But we've known all along that she's going to end up with March in the end, so the film finally stops wasting our time and surrenders to the inevitable.
The presence of an uncredited Eric Blore in the opening sequence bodes well (as does the presence of a young Joseph Calleia), but the film falls disappointingly short of the wit and grit the title and period might have led one to anticipate. Abbott's lacklustre direction fails, for example, to capitalise on Broadway actress Lily Cahill - making an extremely rare film appearance - who is robust and engaging as Ann's cynical workplace buddy; but doesn't get a single close-up. It's interesting though to see a substantially younger-than-usual Harry Davenport as the ghost from Ann's past who reappears to haunt her.