In yet just one more of the several "weepies" she churned out under contract during the early phase of her film career, Irene Dunne still manages to shine as Charles Bickford's unappreciated, abandoned and ultimately besmirched spouse. Her "Anna" is the woman that can be found behind every man who has made it big: rock solid, determined, loyal and faithful. She has ambition for the both of them but Bickford casts her aside for the floozy Gwili Andre once he makes it to the top. With everything seemingly going against her, Dunne manages to turn the tables on Bickford during the film's climactic divorce/custody battle court scene. When she lies about Bickford being the father of their son, the audience is stunned but she is simply waking up and learning to play hardball. It's a stretch that she welcomes him back into the bosom of his family once he returns from prison but then again Dunne always played characters whose virtues perhaps outshone conventional wisdom. Thank goodness she was finally able to break free of these typecast roles once she got out from under a long term contract and became a freelancer. "Theodora Goes Wild" (1936) was her watershed film and the one that established her as one of the founding mothers and leading geniuses of screwball comedy.
Review of No Other Woman
