This sharply-scripted melodrama starring Joan Blondell and Bette Davis rattles along at a gallop - and with enough plot for a two-hour film it needs to! Joan, Bette and Ann Dvorak are three old friends who meet after 10 years. Later, they meet again as Dvorak is about to set off on a cruise, but she ends up running off with Blondell's gangster boyfriend (Lyle Talbot). To tell the whole story would not only give the game away, but would take almost as long as the film to tell. Director Mervyn LeRoy brilliantly crams the story into a 64-minute actual running time without sacrificing either characterisation or atmosphere. Davis and Blondell are marvellous in early starring roles and down the cast list is Humphrey Bogart in his first gangster role. An exemplary lesson to some of today's film-makers in tightness of storytelling.


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