Review of I Loved a Woman

Warners-First National did a bunch of sweeping historic sagas around this time (one particularly good one: The World Changes), and this history of the meat industry is lavish but lopsided. Edward G. Robinson, not young enough at the beginning as an art lover in Athens and not old enough at the end as a retired meat baron back in Athens to escape criminal charges in the U.S., but excellent throughout, not very willingly takes over his dad's beef business when the latter dies, marries a charming Genevieve Tobin, and falls in love with ambitious opera singer (ha!) Kay Francis, who keeps serenading him with his favorite tune, "Home on the Range." She's an eyeful, but ruthless, and we grow to hate her, and Tobin, initially a sympathetic do-gooder, becomes an angry neglected wife. Robinson, too, loses whatever sympathy we had for him as he sells tainted beef to the U.S. army, dodges taxes and hides the books, and cheerfully cheats on his wife. He ends up senile and bitter, which he appears to deserve. Some plotting and character holes in this one, and in the end there's no one to root for, but it's pleasingly sprawling and certainly well acted.