Woman Against the World

W.A.T.W opens with hunky Johnny, the farmhand, trying to help his girl Anna with her chores. Anna is played by Alice Moore, niece of actress and producer Mary Pickford. The grumpy old father gives him hell, so they marry in secret. Then things go downhill from there. Edgar Edwards (Johnny) seems to have written and starred in this shortie from Columbia Pictures, which was pretty rare for those days. Everything was so compartmentalized then... actors were rarely also writers. This one moves along pretty quickly... a little too quickly. We witness lots of big milestones, some unexplained, some are pretty straight-forward, and the couple runs into more and more bad luck. Can't really say too much here, storywise, to avoid giving away major plotpoints. The main plot line here is that she lost custody of her baby, and spends the remainder of the movie trying to find and reclaim her daughter. This seems to have been filmed in a Canadian studio, and at only 66 minutes, it feels like some helpful scenes have been cut or lost. It's an OK story, but given a few more scenes of explanation, could have been great. The sound and picture quality are remarkably good for a film from 1937.

Alice Moore died quite young at 44, but couldn't find out much about that. She seems to have married, moved to DC, and died just a couple years after her mother. Directed by David Selman; one of the last films Selman did.. he died the same year this was made.

Sour-puss aunt gives away widowed Alice Moore's baby and then refuses to say to whom. Alice tries to get the old.... biddy to tell her and accidentally kills her. Too depressed by this turn of event to help attorney Ralph Forbes mount a defense, she winds up in prison for manslaughter, where she decides she needs to get out and find her baby. Once out, she falls in with evil companions and hires a crooked detective to find her baby.

This idiot-plotted soaper was the last film of Miss Moore. She was the daughter of Tom Moore and Alice Joyce, but her career didn't go anywhere beyond Columbia Bs. In this one, she spends her time in a depressed state, which is a reasonable way to play the part, but not terribly interesting, and she soon retired to private life.

Co-star Ralph Forbes' star had fallen a bit since he had co-starred in 1928's BEAU GESTE, but he was working steadily for Columbia as a lead and in supporting roles for the majors. His career dribbled away in the 1940s and he died in 1951.