Review of The Girl from 10th Avenue

Well-heeled lawyer Geoff Sherwood (Ian Hunter) stands in a crowd waiting for the bride and groom to come out of the church. He's drunk and talking about making a scene and detectives decide to have him hauled off to Bellview—but Miriam Brady (Bette Davis), a young woman who sews labels on clothes, takes his arm and moves him out of danger. A couple of his friends follow along and ask her to stick with him. His ex-fiancée Valentine has just gotten married. They drink, and by next morning they're somewhere in upstate New York, married too. Miriam, being an extraordinarily decent girl, tells him she'll disappear, but he asks her to stay around. They stay married, move into an apartment in a nice building owned by the redoubtable Mrs. Martin (Alison Skipworth), who sort of adopts Miriam. The Geoff-Miriam arrangement appears to be working, at least to him, but when Valentine reappears and sets out to recapture Geoff, Miriam won't stand still. She tricks Valentine into making a scene—throwing a pineapple—in a tony restaurant. But Geoff is easily led and prepares to leave Miriam; she leaves first. But in the process he realizes... well, it ends happily. Hunter is somewhat self-contained, neither a loud drunk nor a loud arguer. Miriam is right when she says he hasn't thought things through very well. Davis is just the right combination of toughness and uncertainty, much more of the former than the latter, and though she's not the most beautiful actress of her day, she knows how to light up the screen and shake the definition of beauty until it collapses at her feet and she rises above it, glowing.