Ultra-slick soaper opens as the alcohol-fueled marriage of aviator George Brent & glamorous concert pianist Mary Astor gets nullified on a technicality. Sobered up, Brent soon realizes he’ll always be playing second-fiddle to Tchaikovsky and returns to loyal stand-by gal Bette Davis. But this happy (and legit) marriage turns tragic when Brent’s plane goes missing in the Amazon Jungle! Worse, Astor got herself pregnant on their (false) wedding night!! So, likely widow Bette offers to take the child, raise it as her own and give it Brent’s name & fortune. What could go wrong? Ah, illegitimacy, mother of a thousand & one Three-Hankie Weepers. Made during Davis’s glory decade @ Warners, this lesser-known title makes for good, not great trash. But composer Max Steiner has fun sampling Chopin & Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto in his score while Astor (who worked with Davis to pump up their interplay and win a Best Supporting Actress Oscar®) had the piano-playing chops to fake her way around the keyboard. (The actual phlegmatic playing is probably by Max Rabinovitch.) And check out the neatly served Damon Runyon two-reeler, AT THE STROKE OF TWELVE, an early credit for director Jean Negulesco, included on the DVD.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Davis probably had to fight half the studio on the realistically disheveled, just-out-of-bed look she pulls off toward the end: hair a mess, no makeup, workaday pajama pants. You can bet Jack Warner raised hell when he saw the ‘dailies.’
DOUBLE-BILL: Two years before, in THE OLD MAID, Bette had the illegitimate kid, still with Brent, director Edmund Goulding, lenser Tony Gaudio & composer Max Steiner. Plus, twice the tears and double the masochism.
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