Amor Proibido

Little remembered great actress Ann Harding, who was also a first magnitude star during a short period with the advent of the talkies, stars in this tearjerker supreme, as noble, good-natured, unselfish, brave, courageous Vergie Winters, who defies small-town gossip, carrying on with an illicit relationship, with now-married ex-sweetheart John Shadwell, played adequately by John Boles, who's better than usual in this role.

Harding's very good and sincere acting makes believable her self sacrifice because of the bigger-than-life love which she feels for both, Shadwell and their illegitimate daughter, Joan.

Helen Vinson is very, very good as Bole's selfish, mean, superficial and ambition-driven (just the very opposite of Vergie) wife, Laura- the face of this now forgotten actress reminds me greatly of Helen Hayes'. Josephine Whittwell is also very good as sympathetic Madame Claire, who in the film is implied to be sort of the owner or `madam' of the local `bordello', who's also friendly to Harding and helps to save her small hat store (she's the local milliner) from bankruptcy. Cecil Cunnigham and Maidel Turner shine too as two local fellow professional gossipers.

Mick La Salle, in his book `Complicated Women' states that this film was released the week before the Production Code was finally fully enforced. A must see for fans of classic pre-code weepies.

Many people today have no idea that films in the early 1930s were very sleazy--even sleazier in some cases as films today. While there was some rare nudity in these films, the saucy content is what really surprises! Imagine....many of these pictures had gay characters, premarital sex was okay, abortion was not unheard of AND adultery was occasionally romanticized....such as in "The Life of Vergie Winters".

When the film begins, John Shadwell (John Boles) had just married Laura. This is a bit of a surprise, as John had been dating Vergie (Ann Harding) and you assume he married as he did because Laura would be more beneficial to his political aspirations. Later, you learn that his family paid off Vergie's father to break off the relationship...again, because Vergie isn't the ideal congressman's wife. So how do John and Vergie deal with this? They have a lifelong affair...and Vergie seems like a giant doormat. She expects nothing and takes nothing from John (other than his.....) and when she becomes pregnant with his baby, she gives it to John and Laura to raise. Eventually, she and John get old and John assumes room temperature...and the movie ends.

I guess I am just a very conservative guy when it comes to marriage and a film glamorizing adultery and excusing it just doesn't appeal to me. The film is well acted but is also very schmaltzy and dull.

This is a pretty good melodrama, mostly believable and with pretty good characters. Most of the time it maintains a decent balance, only occasionally becoming a bit too sentimental or heavy-handed. The main character's career as a milliner is worked into the story in some useful and interesting ways.

Ann Harding plays Vergie, who is in love with a married politician played by John Boles. A few of the developments and characters' attitudes reflect the era in which the film was made, but the primary dilemmas faced by the two leads would be largely the same in any setting. There are quite a few secondary characters, and some are extraneous, but some of them are good additions to the story. The supporting cast includes some good character actors (and watch also for an uncredited but amusing appearance by Walter Brennan).

It moves fairly quickly, and the story has enough to hold your interest and make it worth a look if you're interested in a somewhat sentimental story.

1934's "The Life of Vergie Winters" was an RKO vehicle for fading early talkie star Ann Harding, well cast as an unselfish woman, Virgie Winters, foolishly cast aside by her former lover John Shadwell (John Boles), who was told by Vergie's father Jim (Edward Van Sloan) that she intended to marry his assistant, good natured Hugo McQueen (Lon Chaney Jr.). Marrying on the rebound to Laura (Helen Vinson), whose father offered Vergie's father $10,000 to assure that the wedding take place, John later returns to Vergie to proclaim his true love, after she has made a success selling hats to ladies in a millinery shop. Vergie does not want any scandal attached to John's name as his rise in politics is swift and assured, John's wife only interested in the prestige of being Mrs. John Shadwell. Vergie even goes so far as to give up her love child with John, sending their newborn daughter off to Washington to live with her father, remaining ignorant of her parentage throughout childhood (future Nancy Drew Bonita Granville enjoys a showy bit as the young Joan Shadwell). Only at the end, after John attends his daughter's wedding, does he attempt to make a clean break from his clinging spouse, who has known about his affair with Vergie for many years, and refuses to grant him a divorce. Everything that female moviegoers would expect from such a story is present, right through to the expectedly downbeat finale, so it's up to the cast to offer their own interpretations to carry off various subplots (a bit too many I should think). Appearing uncredited is Walter Brennan, whose timely bit of spying precipitates Vergie's fall from grace with the town gossips, as well as the unmistakable Edwin Maxwell, cast in his usual role as orator (I guess John Carradine was unavailable). Speaking of Carradine, his future co-star Lon Chaney is present in the 6th billed role of Hugo McQueen, still billed under his real name, Creighton Chaney (this was only his 8th film), a nice change of pace though on screen (until the very end) for only the first 15 minutes (still at his original studio, RKO). Ann Harding's performance in the title role is certainly acceptable, but the film was not the hoped-for box office success she anticipated, the newly enforced Hays code preventing such adult frankness in future movie projects.

Okay, I know this is a dated, old fashioned film, made transcendent by the always radiant Ann Harding. Would a woman today sacrifice herself the way Virgie did? I very much doubt it. But it's idealization of such sacrifice really touched me...perhaps because I know how unrealistic it is to expect such behavior today, or even then. Still. I love this film. I'd never seen it before today, March 29, 2015, thanks to who else? TCM, of course. I thought I'd seen every Ann Harding movie ever made... again, thanks to TCM...but they must have made a zillion movies during the 30s, because almost every week, new one turn up...new for me, that is. Bless you TCM...and bless you Ann Hadding, wherever you are...