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Original release date: 1937
Video/DVD Release Date: 9/1/1998
UPC: 27616261939
MGM (WARNER)
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From All Movie Guide
Edmund
Goulding directed this remake of his own 1929 The Trespasser, which starred Gloria
Swanson. Here Bette
Davis assumes the lead role of Mary Donnell, a young innocent married to a
bootlegger. When her husband is killed, she decides to pursue a better life and
gets a job as a secretary to attorney Lloyd Rogers (Ian Hunter). Lloyd falls in
love with Mary but stoically keeps his feelings hidden from her. One of Lloyd's
clients is the millionaire Merrick (Donald
Crisp), whose playboy son Jack (Henry
Fonda) falls in love with Mary. The two elope and take off on their
honeymoon, but Merrick, who feels that Mary is not good enough for Jack, asks
that the marriage be annulled. Jack reluctantly agrees and Mary goes back to her
old job with Lloyd. But Mary finds that she is pregnant and has a baby boy. She
swears Lloyd to secrecy concerning her child and Lloyd agrees. Meanwhile, Jack
marries a woman of his own class, Flip (Anita
Louise), but she is fatally injured in an automobile accident. Lloyd also
falls ill and dies at Mary's feet --but not before confessing his love for Mary.
When his will is read, it reveals that he has left Mary and her child a vast
fortune. Lloyd's wife (Katherine
Alexander) believes the baby boy is Lloyd's illegitimate child, and she
tries to overturn the terms of the will. Jack hears about Mary's child, and she
confesses that the child is actually his. Merrick then tries to have the baby
taken away from Mary, contending that she is unfit to raise the baby. Unable to
withstand Merrick's legal hammering, Mary offers the child to Jack and Flip.
Mary, distraught after abandoning her baby, leaves on a European trip. While she
is gone, Flip dies and Jack leaves for Europe to try to find her. Paul
Brenner