The stereotypical busy body mother-in-law is the true villain here, a vain and selfish woman so consumed with the material things her and daughter Irene Hervey got from her late husband that she manipulates her daughter into want, forcing struggling husband Donald Cook to embezzle from the bank he works for. Sentenced to seven years in prison, Cook is only comforted by Hervey's promise to wait for him, a promise Lloyd intends to make Hervey renig on. Five years go by and Hervey divorces Cook so she can marry, obviously with Lloyd's urging, the extremely possessive wealthy business man Edwin Maxwell who treats Hervey like a possession. When Cook is released, he makes his presence known, and it is obvious that he is not happy that Hervey betrayed him, setting up a confrontation that will become front page news.
Yes, the story is contrived, and certainly, it paints an ugly picture of the nagging mother-in-law, brute of a husband (Hervey's second), and young women as materialistic without reasoning. But the script allows the viewer to see Hervey's guilt, Cook's regret, and allow justice to be served. Certainly, the payoff for Lloyd isn't as satisfying as I would have liked it to be, but in spite of an over emphasis on sentiment, I found it engrossing as marital drama. The presence of idiotic detectives searching for the missing Hervey and Cook serves no purpose other than low comedy, but a view of one of them with a laughing parrot reminded me, inappropriately, of the dumb thugs in "The Fuller Brush Girl". A last minute twist doesn't come out of left field, having been hinted at throughout.
Yes, the story is contrived, and certainly, it paints an ugly picture of the nagging mother-in-law, brute of a husband (Hervey's second), and young women as materialistic without reasoning. But the script allows the viewer to see Hervey's guilt, Cook's regret, and allow justice to be served. Certainly, the payoff for Lloyd isn't as satisfying as I would have liked it to be, but in spite of an over emphasis on sentiment, I found it engrossing as marital drama. The presence of idiotic detectives searching for the missing Hervey and Cook serves no purpose other than low comedy, but a view of one of them with a laughing parrot reminded me, inappropriately, of the dumb thugs in "The Fuller Brush Girl". A last minute twist doesn't come out of left field, having been hinted at throughout.