XoWizIama Excellent adaptation.

Plustown A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Ava-Grace Willis Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Freeman This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

mark.waltz In one of her few leading roles, the powerful dramatic actress Ann Dvorak tries to get past a mediocre script involving a troubled young woman trying to get through her own mediocre past. She's pregnant out of wedlock, abandoned by the wealthy father (disappearing without a trace thanks to an obviously possessive unseen society matron mother), and in her effort to support her child, ends up a fugitive in hiding with reporter Lee Tracy trying to get the goods on her. The non-sensical situation lacks in any real character motivation or believable plot development and culminates with Tracy stealing her from her obviously decent boyfriend (Richard Cromwell) seemingly so he can expose her as the notorious moll she's gained an undeserved reputation for being.While not unattractive, Dvorak didn't have traditional leading lady looks which made her perfect as the other woman, gangster's moll or scheming sister to the heroine. Photographing rather harshly, the switch of her hair color from black to blonde accentuates that even more. This is pretty much no different than the women's soap opera type films which starred such Warners contract players as the very young Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Kay Francis, Joan Blondell or Jean Muir, but Dvorak lacks their obvious vulnerability and the script lacks conviction. Much of the supporting cast is wasted, but there are good moments for Tracy (especially his kind-hearted send-off of Cromwell) and Charles B. Middleton as a very assertive police sergeant. The pre-code spark is there amongst a few spicy lines but that isn't enough to make this one memorable.

marcslope Fast little Warners item, from a play by Maurine Watkins--who wrote the source material for "Chicago," and this hard-boiled B is very much cut from the same cloth, with big-city corruption, tough-talking dames, and vice not always unrewarded. Ann Dvorak, always good in this sort of part, is the girl from the wrong side of the tracks whose attempts to crash high society are thwarted, and ends up a fugitive, for reasons she's not quite guilty and not quite innocent of. She's also an unwed mom, and not entirely an unsympathetic one, this being a year before they started fully enforcing the Production Code. Lee Tracy plays, as he was born to play, a fast-talking, fast-thinking newspaperman, and watching him at his peak is sort of like watching Cagney--he's so lively he's impossible not to like, even playing a reprobate like this. The story doesn't quite hang together: If Molly was really abandoned by her mom at seven, as she states early on, she's only 16 at the start of the film, which makes no sense at all. And while nobody, not even Tracy, is able to recognize the peroxide version of Molly as the same on-the-lam gal in the picture they have of her, her infant daughter does, at once. The tone's uneven, too, veering between melodrama and uneasy comedy. But Dvorak and Tracy are so watchable, and the supporting cast (Richard Cromwell, Guy Kibbee, Frank McHugh) so quintessential early-'30s Warners, it's a fine time-waster.

calvinnme Molly Louvain is a girl who has become pregnant by a rich young fellow that loves her and wants to marry her. He has told her that he intends to tell his mother that night before Molly gets to his house to attend his birthday party. However, when Molly shows up at the family estate she is told by the butler that mother and son left suddenly for Europe. Apparently Molly's fiancé loved mother's millions more than he loved Molly and no doubt Molly's would-have-been mother-in-law could not tolerate the idea of a member of the huddled masses being her future daughter-in-law. All alone in the world, Molly turns to shady character Nicky Gant, who takes her away from her home town and out on the road. Molly figures he's possibly financing their way with stick-ups, but Molly asks no questions as she has a baby to think of. One day Nick gets in a shoot-out with the cops with Molly at the wheel of the car, and suddenly Molly is up to her neck in Nick's past and present illegal activities. She dyes her hair blonde and decides to hide out under a false name in a small apartment until the heat is off. Molly has two problems that complicate matters even further - she is unable to go check on her baby, who she has left with kindly acquaintances, and ambitious reporter Scotty Cornell lives across the hall and is determined to find Molly Louvain and crack the story of a lifetime. This film is watchable largely because nobody plays a woman suffering from the internal moral struggle of good versus evil like Ann Dvorak (as Molly Louvain) and nobody plays the smart aleck reporter that will do anything for a story like Lee Tracy (as Scotty Cornell). However, the film seems incomplete in so many ways. There is no chemistry between Tracy and Dvorak at all, and a story like this needs their chemistry in order to have their relationship in the film seem something other than tacked on. The ending is also woefully incomplete. It seems like Warners ran out of budget and the powers that be just said "stop here and write some dialogue to round this thing out".I'd recommend this just to see Lee Tracy and Ann Dvorak do the kind of acting they do best, just don't expect the kind of precode sizzle you saw in any of James Cagney's and Joan Blondell's films.

moveebob Curtiz' slick, odd, interesting little flick. Ann Dvorak is a small-town go-getter. Her boyfriend deserts her. She hooks up with a worthless, hustling traveling salesman and has a daughter by the boyfriend who dropped her. She tries to drop the salesman and gets involved in a murder imbroglio, but gets off with the help of fast-talking newspaper reporter Lee Tracy. Fast paced and acted in Warner's best style