A Woman's Man

Marguerite De La Motte is a top star, suffering from diva syndrome, and her longtime director, John Halliday indulges and reproves her, as does longtime companion Kitty Kelly. But now she's exhausted and takes a vacation at Lake Arrowhead, where she meets Wallace Ford, who is training for the middleweight boxing championship. And they fall in love.

It's a story with a great heart and hints of a real story of a thoughtless heel who gets trapped -- that's Miss De La Motte -- and destroys the thing she loves. In the hands of a top production team, it could have been a comedy and a satire and a tragedy, like WHAT PRICE HOLLYWOOD? Or its semi-remake, A STAR IS BORN. John Halliday seems up for it, and Miss Kelly too, but while Ford is game, he lacks the depth, and Miss De La Motte's character is too overtly selfish, or perhaps she lacks the ability to make her weaknesses seem forgivable instead of simply self-indulgent.

The real problem is this isn't a Selznick production, aiming for the downtown movie palaces, it's Trem Carr at Monogram, grimly preselling into States Rights markets for enough money to get it on film. So the result is mediocre, with flashes of something great.... and those flashes make it seem even seedier.