Bette Davis plays a shopgirl? You bet, and even in this type of role she's more convincing than her nemesis Joan Crawford due to the fact that Warners was less about glamour, and more about real people. Miriam Brady is a girl who on her lunch break witnesses a man, Geoffrey Sherwood, getting dumped by his girlfriend who has just married another man. He is drunk, and about to be arrested when she takes him to a café and on a lark (and drunk, too), she marries him. Their marriage moves sort of smoothly -- Geoff starts his own business; she betters herself with the help of her landlady and friend Mrs. Martin (Alison Skipworth). Then out of the blue, Geoff's ex-girlfriend, Valentine (Katherine Alexander) returns to claim Geoff. It's up to Miriam to fight for her guy until the end.
A remake of a stage play called "Outcast", the movie has its staginess from start to finish minus the street and exterior scenes. No music is used, and there is a tinny echo in the voices of the actors that indicates the way films were recorded then, a thing that detracts a little from the external scenes. Davis has another chance to showcase her ability to take a scene and run with it: her confrontation scene with Katherine Alexander and subsequent scene with Ian Hunter prove how good she was. THE GIRL FROM TENTH AVENUE is, while being about a shopgirl, completely devoid of the glamour more akin to MGM and Davis' portrayal is less maudlin than spitfire. The camera certainly loves Davis' face as it gives her some good closeups throughout. And at a brief, 70 minutes, it makes for a light, enjoyable view, much better than her standard, mid-30s fare.
A remake of a stage play called "Outcast", the movie has its staginess from start to finish minus the street and exterior scenes. No music is used, and there is a tinny echo in the voices of the actors that indicates the way films were recorded then, a thing that detracts a little from the external scenes. Davis has another chance to showcase her ability to take a scene and run with it: her confrontation scene with Katherine Alexander and subsequent scene with Ian Hunter prove how good she was. THE GIRL FROM TENTH AVENUE is, while being about a shopgirl, completely devoid of the glamour more akin to MGM and Davis' portrayal is less maudlin than spitfire. The camera certainly loves Davis' face as it gives her some good closeups throughout. And at a brief, 70 minutes, it makes for a light, enjoyable view, much better than her standard, mid-30s fare.