Forgotten Women

Marion Schilling is a Hollywood extra. She rooms with Beryl Mercer, another extra, who once was a star. Marion and Rex Bell are in love. He's a reporter, and ambitious. When Beryl Mercer discovers that producer Eddie Kane is in a plot with 'retired' gangster Edward Earle to break his contracts and blow town with the boodle, she brings word to Rex, who parlays the story into a raise and a promotion to City Editor. Marion celebrates their marriage the evening before.... and discovers some money, a letter, and that Rex is going to marry Carmelita Geraghty, the daughter of his publisher, she takes the advice of fellow extra and good-time girl Virginia Lee Corbin and heads off to have a party with Earle.

Miss Mercer shine, as a sweet old lady, who offers prayers that the kids do well, but when matters turn out poorly, turns into a force of nature. Director Richard Thorpe seems to have some issues directing most of the actors in their lines, but visually this is a fine production with a great chase sequence.

Miss Mercer, who was born in 1876, made a few silent films beginning in 1915, but she began her long stretch of films in 1928 in Edward Sloman's WE AMERICANS. Within a couple of years, she was in demand for payng sweet, vague, motherly types, from Lew Ayres' mother in ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (where she replaced Zasu Pitts) to Queen Victoria in THE LITTLE PRINCESS. Still working through the year of her death, she died following surgery in 1939.