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The titular superstition originally pertains to soldiers in trenches, young women in the city face their own combat. Grade school acquaintances, crossed paths and fluctuating fortunes. The showgirl with a stint in reform school (Joan Blondell), "too full of fun," her opposite number is the socialite listless amid luxury (Ann Dvorak). "Somehow the things that make other people happy leave me cold." "If wanting things makes you happy, I should be turning cartwheels right now." (As the class valedictorian turned stenographer, Bette Davis is relegated to haughty looks and beach cheesecake.) The unsatisfied lady absconds with the underworld playboy (Lyle Talbot), her friend is there to comfort the jilted husband (Warren William). The reversal of blonde and brunette is commented on by a pair of street sweepers, observing stringy Dvorak asking fur-swathed Blondell for money. "Will you stop reminding me of heaven when I'm so close to the other place?" The feminine prism, Mervyn LeRoy's salty run-through for Lumet's The Group. The search for passion leads to drugs and kidnapping, hophead and Baby (Buster Phelps) holed up in a seedy flat while the hoodlum (Humphrey Bogart) paces to the sound of police sirens. "I tell you, the heat's on enough to curl your shoe leather." A multitude of Warners staples in uncredited bits (Frankie Darro sneaking a smoke with the heroines, Glenda Farrell behind bars with no use for men, Herman Bing striking up the band), a useful template for Negulesco (How to Marry a Millionaire, Three Coins in the Fountain, The Best of Everything). Above all, a tribute to Dvorak's vividness as a complicated woman lost and found in the vortex, eulogized in a child's prayer and the incense of a discarded matchstick. With Edward Arnold, Allen Jenkins, Grant Mitchell, Jack La Rue, and Anne Shirley. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |