This film does nothing to hide the fact that sensitive blonde Mae Clarke works as a prostitute in World War I-era London. In between taking shelter from air raids and sleeping with military men so she can pay the rent on her shabby one-room hovel, she manages to strike up a love affair with wide-eyed American serviceman Douglass Montgomery, who doesn’t know she’s a prostitute. They fall hard for each other, but she does everything she can to sabotage it because she feels unworthy. She comes from a family of poor drunkards and has lived on the edge her whole life; he comes from horseback-riding aristocrats who have their asses wiped by servants.
It’s an effective tearjerker that never gets too sentimental. Along with being a seedy specimen of pre-Production Code Hollywood, it’s most notable in film history for being one of the too-few films from director James Whale. He made this just before he made Frankenstein (which also features Mae Clarke). Also, a young Bette Davis has a small part as Douglass Montgomery’s sister.
Adapted from a Robert Sherwood play. The play was adapted again in 1940 in a sanitized take starring Vivian Leigh and Robert Taylor.