Tarnished Lady

Tallulah Bankhead loves writer Alexander Kirkland, but she and her mother, Elizabeth Patterson, are living on the edge; not that it stops them from living in a nice apartment or buying the latest fashions. It means they are waiting until Miss Patterson's sister dies and leaves them a lot of money. At her mother's insistence, Miss Bankhead marries Clive Brook, one of those masterful, self-made stuffed shirts. She's miserable, of course, and when her aunt dies, leaving most of her money to charity, but a competence to Miss Patterson, Miss Bankhead leaves her husband, only to find that Kirkland has already found consolation in the arms of another. It also happens to be the day the market crashed, leaving Brook dependent on his friends. Miss Bankhead decides to make her own way, because lower-class people can do it, and therefore she should have no trouble, while Mr. Brook is also too angry to seek her out.

It's one of those weepers that raise my hackle, and it offers a well-deserved sneer at its upper-class subjects; only Osgood Perkins comes off as a good guy. Miss Bankhead is too large for the movie screen, and Mr. Brook matches her, mostly by his studied immobility. I have no doubt that director George Cukor looked on it as an opportunity, but his unmanageable star defeats him and writer Donald Ogden Stewart.