Scarlet Pages

In 1911, 17-year-old Elsie Ferguson gives up her daughter to an adoption agency. She is told she will never be able to find out where the baby goes to. We cut, and it's Miss Ferguson's office door. She's a lawyer now, fending off the amatory advances of John Halliday. She does agree to go to a night club with him. We cut to a night club, where Marian Nixon is in a spangly, short dress, sits at a table telling boyfriend Grant Withers she won't marry him. She then gets up and is the lead dancer in a well-shot chorus number.

Anyone who's seen these things is pretty sure how things are going to turn out in the end. The question is: how do we get there? We find out when Withers and Miss Nixon show up at Miss Ferguson's office. Will she defend the girl against the charge of murdering her father? By the end of this scene, Halliday shows up. He's the District Attorney, and he arrests Miss Nixon.

The rest of the movie is a courtroom drama. As usual, there's a considerable gap between what goes on in a real court room and what goes on here. As usual, Fred Kelsey shows up as a dumb cop, giving testimony. As usual, there's a Surprising Secret revealed, which will come as no surprise to the audience. And as usual, there's a reconciliation at the end which takes place way too fast and easily.

Miss Ferguson is pretty good in the scenes that make sense, with a realistic hauteur that might have provided her a good living in Agnes Moorhead-style roles, had she needed them. She didn't. She never made another.