After killing her brute of a husband, the long-suffering Mady Christians raises her children with a combination of discipline and love in order to set them on the path to a righteous life. She has vowed that she will return to their home town to turn herself in for the murder so she can atone for her "sin" when they are of age, but not allow them to be involved in her own day of reckoning. Going from the cold dingy cabin with her three older children and new born baby to the lights of the city and becoming a well loved clothing store designer and owner, Christians deals with the typical teenaged angst of the three growing children and the lame younger son who is the light of the family with his goodness. When one of the daughters is exploited by the town playboy (a young Robert Taylor), violence erupts which threatens to send the older son (William Henry) to prison for assault. The family, with the help of Christian's new companion (Charles Bickford), deals with both traumas with the dignity and loyalty that they learned through their mother, even when she had to be "wicked" to teach them right from wrong.
Somewhat sappy but well acted (especially by Christians and an understated Bickford), this is a gripping mother love drama that has many plot holes but isn't wrenching to try to get through. Jean Parker and Betty Furness, as the two daughters, are completely unalike in every way, with Parker set on getting the rogue Taylor to marry her, even if it means losing her chastity, while the easier going Furness spends time with the comically nebbish Sterling Holloway, too much of a clod to be surly to her. The mixture of comedy and drama works here, and it's nice to see Bickford tone down his sometimes brutish manliness to be much more tender, although one sequence of him insisting on being the man of the family (to have the last say with "obey" a key word) goes against the gentility of his character. The trial scene at the end shows Christian's "Wicked Woman" to be quite not so, with Charles Lane as her defense attorney presenting a case that even has an impact on the D.A. In less capable hands and a less magnetic actress than Christians, this could have been extremely cloying, but her performance makes you root for her from the start.
Somewhat sappy but well acted (especially by Christians and an understated Bickford), this is a gripping mother love drama that has many plot holes but isn't wrenching to try to get through. Jean Parker and Betty Furness, as the two daughters, are completely unalike in every way, with Parker set on getting the rogue Taylor to marry her, even if it means losing her chastity, while the easier going Furness spends time with the comically nebbish Sterling Holloway, too much of a clod to be surly to her. The mixture of comedy and drama works here, and it's nice to see Bickford tone down his sometimes brutish manliness to be much more tender, although one sequence of him insisting on being the man of the family (to have the last say with "obey" a key word) goes against the gentility of his character. The trial scene at the end shows Christian's "Wicked Woman" to be quite not so, with Charles Lane as her defense attorney presenting a case that even has an impact on the D.A. In less capable hands and a less magnetic actress than Christians, this could have been extremely cloying, but her performance makes you root for her from the start.