User reviews

You have to judge this film in the context of how it was exhibited back in 1933. This hour-long film was not RKO's attempt at a main exhibit - that would have been something along the lines of that year's "Flying Down to Rio". All of the studios made short little films like this as filler for matinees - much like afternoon TV programming.

The film starts out with a young steel town couple Jim and Anna Stanley (Charles Bickford and Irene Dunne) just before they get married. Anne has big dreams of getting away from the mills, Jim is content to go along as things are. After they marry, Anna takes in boarders and saves up Jim's sizable paychecks so they can get "out of this place", although at the time she doesn't have a plan. Her chance comes when quiet and studious boarder Joe Zarcovia (Eric Linden) comes up with a chemical process for making dye from waste from the steel making process. For some reason, Anna seems to believe that her big hunk of steel-making husband is a genius at business and that he can make a fortune from this formula. Given we only have 58 minutes for our story, of course she is right. Thus the chemist and the Stanleys go into business together and soon are fabulously rich. The Stanleys have everything, including a little son. Unfortunately, in the case of Jim, you can take the man out of steel-town but you can't take the steel-town of the man. Soon he's on a spree that involves heavy drinking, another woman that for some reason insists on marriage rather than just the cushy kept-woman lifestyle she has in New York City, and then the business begins to suffer.

This film is so short that quite a few things don't make sense. For one thing, the message of the picture seems to be that the Stanleys are made for each other regardless of what happens, in spite of the fact that these two seem to be two very different people who want very different things out of life. Anna is supposed to be the epitome of a loyal woman, although considering what she's put through by her husband she seems more like a doormat by the end of the film. Then there is Jim's golden business acumen that seems to come out of nowhere - he has done manual labor his whole life and probably didn't even finish high school.

From a historical standpoint, I found one fact to be just plain ironic. In the beginning of the film, Anna is sitting on the porch of her little "company town" house telling Jim how she didn't want to be just another generation in generations of steel town wives. She talks about how if she and Jim got married all they would have to look forward to is a house supplied by the company and Jim employed by the mill doing the same thing until he retired. Although she seems to think this is all very dull, how much so many people living in these now largely abandoned steel towns today would give to have this kind of "dullness" brought back to their lives - a guarantee of a living wage throughout their adult lives with some degree of loyalty by their employer.

This one is worth your time if it comes your way - just don't expect "Gone With the Wind".

A group of people lives near the steel mills in a run-down neighborhood. Anna (Irene Dunne) and Jim (Charles Bickford) are in love with each other, but Anna longs for something better from life and Jim is content with the way things are. However, Anna is determined to change things, so she enlists Joe's (Eric Linden) help. Joe is an inventor with an excellent discovery; he makes Jim his manager and the two make a fortune. Unfortunately, Jim is out of town very often, and he gets lonely, so he becomes unfaithful with an exotic blonde (Gwili Andre). Soon Anna wonders if helping Jim was worth it after all.

This film is rather short, and I suspect that some of it is missing, but the story has continuity. It is a rather entertaining pre-code with a bitter courtroom battle at the end of the film. All of the actors are outstanding in their roles.

Irene Dunne stars as a factory-town woman who wants a better life (like Barbara Stanwyck in Stella Dallas, Katharine Hepburn in Alice Adams and Joan Crawford in Possessed). She's in love with factory worker Charles Bickford. They marry and she runs a boarding house to make extra money. One of the boarders is a shy immigrant (Eric Linden) who has discovered a great new dye. Dunne talks Bickford into throwing in their savings and open a dye works. They become rich. But Bickford travels a lot and falls into the clutches of a bad woman (Gwili Andre) who wants more than money: marriage.

The court room finale is a doozy with J. Carroll Naish playing a sleazy (Italian in this case) lawyer who has cooked up a scheme to get his girl friend (Andre) married to Bickford. So they line up a bunch of false witnesses against Dunne. But Dunne turns the tables when they try to grab custody of the baby as well. Excellent plot twist.

Dunne is one of the greats, and she's terrific here too. She's even believable as a factory-town girl. Bickford is an acquired taste and I never liked him as a "leading man." Linden is good is his usual "soft" role. And Naish is always fun to hate. Leila Bennett, Hilda Vaughn, and Christian Rub co-star.

No Other Woman is famous as the film that derailed Danish Gwili Andre's career because her character is so nasty. She battled for another decade to regain a foothold in films but only landed small parts. She committed suicide in 1959 by surrounding herself with publicity photos and press clippings and setting them and herself on fire.

Irene Dunne was rarely paired with actors like Charles Bickford. Here he is a handsome, sweaty blue collar man who thinks -- but rarely with anything above his neck. Irene is kind of in love with him but also is loyal to the effete character played by Eric Linden.

Dunne and Bickford are an appealing couple but if ever a couple entered a marriage doomed to failure, it is the two they play.

He shows how dumb he is by throwing over the stylish, intelligent Dunne for Gwyli Andre -- a nobody in the story and in the history of film.

This is a standard women's picture in some ways. In others, it is a powerful drama. It doesn't seem dated and most assuredly warrants watching.

Irene Dunne was the unquestionable queen of the thirties melodrama ;even when the story is mawkish to a fault, so over the top ,she saves the situation .

A model of a housewife, who helps her husband she cherishes and a young chemist to achieve their American dream,that is to say a dyer workers affair ;very soon (too soon maybe , but the movies were short at the time,being often part of a double-feature),they find themselves thrust to the high society and to a world of luxury.

Miss Dunne,in spite of her fortune,has remained a virtuous lady and she would give it all so as not to be denied the custody of her only child ; the trial would make the movie become thoroughly ridiculous, if it weren't for the actress ' performance, who in her final plea when she's prepared to take all the blame, will win you over; have your box of kleenex besides you.

Bickford and dunne had just recently gotten into films with talkies, and dunne got top billing here. In the story, jim and anna are getting married. Their families have always worked at the steel mill, but anna wants more for them. When they partner with a neighbor on a startup, things go well for a while. Until jim starts spending time in the big city. He falls for a money-grabbing woman, who tries to come between them. Courtroom drama, divorce trial, lies. They pack a lot in during the 58 minute quicky from rko! It's not bad, for a B film. Directed by walter ruben. Died young at 43. Dunne and bickford were both nominated for many oscars; they must have been up against formidable films not to have received any!

A lot of soap opera and melodrama crammed into one hour. It still seems too long. The rise to riches is too fast to be plausible. The divorce trial is so brutal you HOPE it isn't possible.

Bickford's character's 180 makes the whole effort seem a waste.

is a highlight of this short-but-snappy soaper. Irene Dunne (great as usual) plays an ambitious woman who pushed husband (Charles Bickford) to partner with friend (Eric Linden) to create successful business. But Bickford has a yen for babes and links up with a conniving one (Gwili Andre) who pressures him to get a divorce. Film culminates in nasty divorce led by hateful lawyer (J. Carroll Naish). Somehow this all works even tho is pretty far-fetched. Chalk up another success for Irene Dunne.

No Other Woman is sure one misnomer of a title. This rather dated soap opera has Charles Bickford caught between two of them.

First there's Irene Dunne, his wife who saw him through the lean years as he starts a new steel business with young chemist Eric Linden and bore his son Buster Miles. But Bickford never quite changed his partying ways and now that he's rich he carouses on a grander scale.

Enter Gwili Andre a slinky society minx who gets his mojo going and when Bickford's libido is aroused he's obeying what's coming from below decks.

Given the liberalization of divorce laws now, this film is quaintly old fashioned and a lot of younger viewers might not understand what's going on. But back in the day you had to prove allegations made in court and a lot of dirty linen got exposed. Then as now a lot of shaky allegations were made.

Irene Dunne is the noble wife who is ready to defend home and hearth from the intruder in court or anywhere else. A most typical role for her. The climax is the divorce case brought on by Bickford and his lawyer J. Carrol Naish. Naish really steals the film in the end as the kind of shyster that lawyer jokes are made out.

No Other Woman is dated and quaint, but still good entertainment.

I saw(?) this flick once before on the tube, but the reception on the station was so bad, I had to wait for it to come on again. It was a good wait, but it came around again. Irene Dunne and Charles Bickford were probably the only ones around who could'a pulled this one off. Bickford works at the mill, marries Dunne, works hard for the money, but somehow is just not satisfied with life. He's a lucky stiff though, as Irene Dunne-- as was wont of wives in those days--stuck with him through the thick and the thin of it. What is more incredulous is the rags to riches to rags aspect of this film. Bickford finances a new type of dye developed by the young upstart living in the family boarding house, and becomes a millionaire in the process. Yeah...right !! Still more incredulous--if not audacious--is the court scene where a very nasty divorce takes place, replete with witnesses who have been 'greased' to render perjured testimony...the whole nine yards. Bickford flies too close to the Sun with wings made of wax and...you can fairly well imagine the rest. It could'a worked, if the story had been a bit more developed, and if the film had been somewhat longer. This was essentially a character study which failed to study its characters with any depth.

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.

Steel mill worker's daughter Irene Dunne marries mill hand Charles Bickford. He eventually becomes a rich owner of a dye works and takes on New York mistress Gwili Andre. When Miss Andre insists on marriage and Miss Dunne refuses him a divorce, witnesses lie that she is the one having an affair.

It looks as ifthis movie had been more ambitious at one point; certainly, the marriage reception, which looks very Polish, shows the attention to detail that director J. Walter Ruben liked to take. But its short length -- impelled by Slavko Vorkapich's transitional montages -- keep it too brisk for anyone to get any real flavor out of its bite-sized portions. With Eric Linden, Christian Rub, Leila Bennet, and J. Carrol Naish.

No Other Woman (1933)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

A poor married couple (Irene Dunne, Charles Bickford) get rich after making a steel dye but then their marriage starts to fall apart due to him finding a mistress in New York. There's nothing overly special about this film but it runs a fast 58-minutes, which is almost a tad bit too much time. The story is very predictable right down to the showdown in court towards the end. The real reason to watch this is due to the performances of Dunne and Bickford. The two have a lot of chemistry together and make for a great couple. Bickford steals the show as the iron hard man who doesn't know what to do when he gets all that money. J. Carrol Naish has a small role. Previously filmed in 1918 and 1925.

There are a few things spread out in the film that is good but overall it is a mess that doesn't know how to use the medium of cinema even if we ignore the problematic aspects. The film would have been much better at least technically speaking, if only they'd take some more time to establish things at each juncture. Even though I haven't seen them, since there was already two silent film adaptations of this broadway hit, they could have focused on the narrative a bit more and no wonder it got negative reviews when it was originally released.

Disregarding the technical aspect, thinking that this story was a broadway hit (assuming it was mostly a faithful adaptation) shows the normalisation and glorification of abuse of that time, which is not a surprising thing considering the time. But even for that time, the relationships in the film is never convincing. Why would anyone be with the main character Jim and go on to do the exact opposite of the things they believe in. It felt like the portrayal of woman who would act strong but be submissive as expected of them and overall just confirms the male dominance which just isn't the kind of stuff to bring back to streaming.

A lot of RKO and WB films of that era that uses such tropes are coming to streaming now although these remnants of time must be more of an academic interest and not really fit into the entertainment section in this era.