Review of Vanessa, Her Love Story

SPOILER: This movie, now rated TV-PG, was shown as part of a kids matinee double bill at Peoples, a neighborhood theater in Dayton, Ohio, in 1935 or '36, to an audience whose average age was maybe 9.5 years. Though I was a year or two older, I didn't understand it. (I don't think I knew about adultery, for one thing.) It must have made an impression, because I remembered the theme that the woman couldn't divorce her insane husband to marry the man of her dreams. (I also remembered the theme song, "John Peel," but thought it was from another movie.) As part of my current movie viewing hobby, I enjoy finding these old latent memory pics, no matter how bad, and revisiting them. This one isn't all that bad. Poor Vanessa gets herself married to a man she really doesn't care much about, and when Mr. Right becomes available, the situation drives her unstable husband over the edge. Under Victorian British law, she cannot divorce a person who is insane, so she's stuck. Her "innocent" association (??? -- It must have been; these were the days of "the Code") with her true love caused local scandal, and she finally had to return to her husband and wait for him to die. In the end, however, she and her lover wind up singing "John Peel (with his coat so gay ...)" while watching the sun set over their favorite mountain. Actually a fairly good film, but not for 11-year-olds, even today.