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A Lindbergh allusion kicks off the tale, the aviator with transatlantic dreams goes up in flames on the launching pad before the eyes of his pregnant fiancée (Ann Harding). Numb with grief on a park bench, she's mistaken for a streetwalker by a flatfoot until the disgraced physician (Clive Brook) intervenes, "social outcasts should stick together." The baby is given up for adoption, the mother prospers in the furniture business and the doctor tries to get back on his feet as a veterinarian. Years pass, and who does she bump into aboard an ocean liner but the estranged child (Dickie Moore)? She becomes involved with the tyke's adoptive father (Otto Kruger) and the pill he's engaged to (Betty Lawford), the maternal instinct will not be denied. "It's terribly hard to just cut that off once you've had it." Madame X reheated, a roundelay of unrequited endearment enlivened by Gregory La Cava's pockets of tough-minded jocularity. A trip to Italy points up the affinity with Raffaello Matarazzo, the persistent suitor (Tullio Carminati) offers the heroine a serenade and a marriage proposal. "No, no, I think I'll have a shower instead, if you don't mind." (Brook's own offhand declaration of love goes unheard while Harding is lost in thought, she asks him to repeat the question but he reaches for another drink.) "Such wasted sadness," a sacrificial weepie down to the fulfillment-as-punishment of the happy ending, "only an illusion." La Cava's heart lies with Brook's mordant melancholy, and with Janet Beecher as the snarky gal pal who ditches the ongoing melodrama at the watering hole: "I'm going to get a glow-on that will light Broadway from here to the Battery!" Stanwyck has the official remake (Always Goodbye), De Havilland the unofficial one (To Each His Own). With Adrienne D'Ambricourt, Edward Gargan, and Scotty Beckett. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |