A 1935 Bette Davis vehicle, which nabbed her a Best Actress Oscar. Franchot Tone, who I remember from an early Billy Wilder film called Five Graves to Cairo, plays an architect who upon visiting a bar runs into Davis, short of cash as she plummets into drink after drink. Tone recognizes her as a once great actress who has fallen on hard times & befriends her even letting her stay at his country cabin hoping she will dry out. At first reluctant to his ministrations, Davis comes around & Tone even coaxes her, ever so slowly, to act again which gives him an idea to back her (financially) in a starring B'way vehicle but when their relationship gets to be too much for her (he proposes marriage) the remnants of her past life (an abandoned husband who will not give her a divorce under any circumstances is revealed) drives her to desperation in a sequence many will feel is a bit much to force one party to end a marriage (she intentionally crashes a vehicle nearly killing herself but critically wounding her estranged beau). What follows is her road to recovery, both physically & professionally (she takes B'way by storm), w/her learning to deal w/where her life is now. Pretty much a blueprint for the types of films Davis will damn near define is a bit clunky for the time (the car crash is a miniature) but the drama is aces all the way.
