Better than that angel from the same street

Bette Davis' time as TCM's Star of the Month continues tomorrow morning with a bunch of movies from the mid-to-late 1930s, including The Girl from 10th Avenue at 11:00 AM.

Davis plays Miriam Brady, who at the start of the movie is on her lunch hour and standing outside a church where a society wedding is going on. Not that she's a society woman herself; she's a working girl who's going to be out of a job soon what with the Depression still going on. Standing next to Miriam is a man who has obviously gotten very drunk, and is about to make a scene. The police spot it and are about to detain the man, so Miriam whisks him away.

Eventually she gets him to a small basement cafe, where she learns that the man is Geoffrey Sherwood (Ian Hunter), and that he's the former boyfriend of the woman getting married, Valentine (Katherine Alexander), which is why he's getting rip-roaring drunk. Well, that's part of the reason; Geoffrey seems to be willing to get drunk at the drop of a hat. Two of Geoffrey's society friends, Hugh and Tony (John Eldredge and Phillip Reed) show up, offering to take Geoffrey off her hands, but he stays with her.

Fast forward to the next morning, when Geoffrey and Miriam wake up as a married couple, having gotten married upstate in a very hasty ceremony. Miriam is pretty clear that she's doing this to get Geoffrey off the sauce and back on his feet, and that if Geoffrey wants out of the marriage at any time, he's welcome to do it.

Some months pass, and Geoffrey and Miriam have returned from sobering him up, now living in a decent apartment building, but one that's clearly a step down from the society life Geoffrey had before meeting Miriam. He doesn't want anybody to know about the marriage, since Miriam isn't a society girl and would be considered all wrong in the eyes of everybody else in Geoffrey's former circle. He starts his own business, while she takes lessons from the building's owner, former gay 90s chorus girl Agnes (Alison Skipworth), on how to be the wife of a society man.

The two are doing OK in life, if living a non-descript life. But Valentine has grown tired of her husband John (Colin Clive), and has found out that Geoffrey is back in town, and decides she's going to look him up. Valentine is not one to be denied what she wants, so she's going to keep chasing Geoffrey, never mind that he's already married. By this time, Miriam has decided that she really likes Geoffrey and isn't so sure she wants just the trial marriage.

The Girl from 10th Avenue is a movie that is some ways has a very 1930s plot. That it works is mostly down to the acting of Bette Davis, who takes this material and runs with it. She's helped ably by Skipworth, who is a big bright spot in her couple of scenes. Hunter isn't bad, but he's clearly in support of Davis the way George Brent was in all his movies. Colin Clive also shines in his few scenes, while Alexander doesn't get enough to do.

The Girl from 10th Avenue is a great example of the sort of programmer Warner Bros. was making in the 1930s. This is not set the sort of prestige movie Bette would start getting cast in after she tried to break her contract with the studio, even if she's clearly the star. Davis would go on to bigger and better things, but she would have had nothing to be ashamed of with this movie.