Morals for Women (DVD)

Small-town girl Helen Hutson has slept her way into a good job and an enviable lifestyle. She is filled with shame when her childhood sweetheart Paul Cooper comes to visit her in New York City. Intent on reforming, Helen returns to the small hamlet where she was born. Her brother Bud is jailed after attacking a man who makes reference to Helen's sordid past. In order to raise the money for Bud's release, she now is forced into a relationship with a wealthy businessman - an arrangement she has immediate cause to regret.

Filmed several years before the Hays Office crackdown that led to implementation of a stricter Production Code governing the portrayal of illicit acts in movies, Morals for Women (also known by its reissue title, Big City Interlude) boasts a "fallen woman" protagonist played by warm, natural Bessie Love, cast very much against type. She contributes a fine portrayal and gets solid backup from a strong Poverty Row supporting cast that includes Conway Tearle, June Clyde, Natalie Moorhead, Lina Basquette, Edmund Breese, and Emma Dunn. Independent studios like Tiffany (which released this film) occasionally dabbled in risque subject matter but always reinforced conventional mores at film's end, and Love's Helen Hutson gets her happy ending despite the predictable last-reel plot complications. - Ed Hulse

• drama