From a play by Robert E. Sherwood, adapted by Benn Levy and Tom Reed. Pre-code film has good hearted prostitute Mae Clarke unwilling to trick young soldier Douglass Montgomery (The Way to the Stars) into marriage. In a tragic ending she finally agrees after he's found out about her, but is then killed by a Zeppelin bomb.
Interesting fact from Alonso, 'Robert E Sherwood: the playwright in peace and war' (2007): 'Sherwood based his play on his own wartime experience of a chance meeting with an American chorus girl in London in November 1918. Recovering from wounds in battle, Sherwood had gone to Trafalgar Square to join the celebration of the armistice ending the war and found himself next to "a very short and very pretty girl" wearing a small silk American flag pinned to her blouse. The girl described her circumstances as similar to those later attributed to Myra and invited Sherwood to her flat, but he forgot her address and never met her again. Sherwood, through Roy, expressed his realization that Myra and others like her were civilian victims of war.'
Features the type of no nonsense British landlady that would be played by Una O'Connor in later Whale films, by Ethel Griffies. With Doris Lloyd (friend), Frederick Kerr, Enid Bennett (mother) and young Bette Davis.
Some of he sound is a bit dodgy and the performances occasionally veer into overkill but Whale's direction is smooth and Arthur Edeson's camera most accomplished and mobile. Universal.
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