When Richard Arlen brings Nancy Carroll home to mother, she is positive, after hearing that the bride was a chorus girl he has known for a week, that Carroll is a gold-digging tramp. Pauline Frederick, as the mother-in-law from hell, is probably the only person in the universe who could sustain such an opinion after one look at Nancy Carroll, probably the most adorable actress of the early talkies (her only competition was Alice White, who did not reach the same heights). With a face like a little valentine, a fluffy hairdo, and a pretty laugh, Carroll is an utter delight to look at and listen to.
The rest of the picture is not on the same level. It is the simple, often trite, story of an ordinary girl who marries into a snobbish, rich family. As maid Dorothy Stickney says, "They hate each other separately, but they get together to hate outsiders." This attitude takes its toll on the young couple, and it gets worse after Carroll has a baby and Frederick brands her an unfit mother. Though the plot is banal, it is also touching, and there is a sad realism about the heavy drinking that did not end with Prohibition and that is used by the unhappily married to forget their troubles.
The one-note part doesn't give Frederick, a great lady of the stage, much of a chance to shine, and Margalo Gillmore, another Broadway star, is disappointingly given a role with about six words. But the picture belongs to Carroll, who is in almost every scene, and who shines like a whole galaxy. There is also a wonderfully raffish scene at the beginning with the chorus girls who urge Carroll to take up with one of the rich men who pursue them, pointing out that love doesn't keep you nearly as warm as chinchilla.