The Girl from 10th Avenue

After his girlfriend Valentine French dumps him to marry a wealthy suitor, prominent lawyer Geoffrey Sherwood (Ian Hunter) gets drunk and impulsively marries Miriam Brady (Bette Davis) whom he had just met.

This has a dash of Pygmalion with a love quadrangle. The Pygmalion part could be more acute and it would help to have Geoffrey do the teaching. The issue is that Geoffrey and Miriam need to build more chemistry in their relationship. He's a drunk and she has no reason to want him other than finances. Quite frankly, I'm fine with dumping Geoffrey with Valentine if they still want each other. I don't see the romantic connection between Geoffrey and Miriam. Any chemistry is generated by the power of Bette Davis' charisma and I question her reasoning. Otherwise, this is an emotionally flawed romance.

Strictly for die-hard Davis fans.

She's a shop girl from the wrong side of the tracks who meets lawyer IAN HUNTER, on a drunk bender, and decides to restore him to his better self on the spur of the moment. Once he's reformed, she has a struggle trying to keep him from former flame KATHARINE Alexander. (For some reason, my computer refuses to put "Alexander" in caps). It's not a typo.

It's a trifle, the kind of film Davis would come to detest in that it was nothing more than a routine melodrama with some comedy interludes from ALISON SKIPWORTH as a landlady who wants to spruce up Bette's ability to mix with IAN HUNTER's society friends.

Made worth a look only for Bette Davis' performance. She's trim, blonde and almost pretty with those Bette Davis eyes lined with mascara. Unfortunately, it's a weak script with a predictable ending. COLIN CLIVE has little to do but he does play a good drunk scene.

TCM is showing this as part of their Depression-era films.

The Girl From 10th Avenue is one of those B programmers that the brothers Warner were throwing Bette Davis into before they realized what a talent they had. She had already done and got rave reviews for Of Human Bondage, but it made not a whiff of difference. She was a few films from her consolation Oscar for Dangerous.

When Davis got films really beneath her she just went full blown Bette with the voice and the mannerisms that impressionists made a living on for decades. In this film she's a shopgirl who lives in Hell's Kitchen on 10th Avenue who happens to aid a 5th Avenue playboy Ian Hunter when he's been out on a toot. The two wind up married. But can they make a go of it and can Bette fit in with the society just five city blocks from her roots.

This was another Depression Era plot, the shopgirl who marries well and tries to make a go of it. Joan Crawford over at MGM was well known for these roles, though the best of them was the gold digging Crystal in The Women. Davis has to deal with Katharine Alexander who Hunter had broken off with and Hunter has Alexander's ex-husband Colin Clive as a confidante.

Who really scores well is Alison Skipworth who back in the day was a Floradora girl who made a society catch of her own. Skipworth shows Davis the ropes in her own inimitable style.

The Girl From 10th Avenue gets a couple of notches higher rating simply because Davis pushes it up.

Bette Davis is a poor working girl who is about to lose her job and is on her lunch hour. While watching outside a church where a high society wedding is taking place, she stands next to a drunk man who is muttering as the preacher administers the vows. Davis realizes that he is creating a disturbance and gets him to leave with her and the go to a nearby place where she can get a sandwich and he can drink.

Thus starts the relationship that eventually leads to them ending up married. He was driven to drink by the girl at the church who was getting married, because even though she loved him, she was marrying a richer man.

Davis sobers him up and gets him back to his position as a society lawyer in a top firm. All the while telling him that if he wants out, he just has to say so.

Many trials and tribulations ensue before he realizes he does indeed love his wife who he married on a drunken impulse.

The 1935 "ladies who did lunch" got their monies worth from Davis, Ian Hunter, Alison Skipworth, Phillip Reed and John Eldredge, and a top production.

Go back in time to the depression years, the downtown movie palaces with double features, and ladies in their suits, gloves and hats, who went to town once a week for the family shopping and then went to see their favorite stars. This film is one they would have seen - and loved. 9/10

Based on the play "Outcast" (from 1914, no less!), The Girl From Tenth Avenue opens by showing us a wedding invitation, and two gentlemen of the wedding party driving towards the ceremony. Then we see Miriam Brady (Bette Davis) and Geoffrey Sherwood (Ian Hunter) standing on a street corner, listening to the wedding that is taking place. Sherwood is drunk, and Miriam decides to take a personal interest in getting him into a restaurant, away from the wedding scene. Although WHY she does, isn't really explained... Davis had just made "Of Human Bondage", and was about to win the Oscar for "Dangerous"... good year for her! Viewers will recognize the landlord Mrs. Martin, played by Alison Skipworth; she made FOUR films with W.C. Fields. Next thing you know, Miriam and Geoffrey are married, apparently skipping a couple of the 12 steps Sherwood SHOULD be going through. There is a lot of talking in this story, as with most plays. It starts pretty slow, but picks up about halfway through. I wonder if this would have been a little more spicy if it hadn't been made right as the Hays Code was starting to be enforced. Davis and Hunter would make five films together in the 1930s.