That Certain Woman is a 1937 American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 drama film

Drama film

A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...

 written and directed by Edmund Goulding

Edmund Goulding

Edmund Goulding was a British film writer and director. As an actor early in his career he was one of the 'Ghosts' in the 1922 British made Paramount silent Three Live Ghosts alongside Norman Kerry and Cyril Chadwick. Also in the early 20s he wrote several screenplays for star Mae Murray and...

. It is a remake of Goulding's 1929 film The Tresspasser, Gloria Swanson

Gloria Swanson

Gloria Swanson was an American actress, singer and producer. She was one of the most prominent stars during the silent film era as both an actress and a fashion icon, especially under the direction of Cecil B. DeMille, made dozens of silents and was nominated for the first Academy Award in the...

's first sound film

Sound film

A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades would pass before sound motion pictures were made commercially...

.

Synopsis

The soap opera

Soap opera

A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...

-like plot of the Warner Bros.

Warner Bros.

Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...

 release focuses on Mary Donnell, a naive young woman married to a bootlegger

Rum-running

Rum-running, also known as bootlegging, is the illegal business of transporting alcoholic beverages where such transportation is forbidden by law...

 who is killed during the St. Valentine's Day massacre

St. Valentine's Day massacre

The Saint Valentine's Day massacre is the name given to the 1929 murder of 7 mob associates as part of a prohibition era conflict between two powerful criminal gangs in Chicago: the South Side Italian gang led by Al Capone and the North Side Irish gang led by Bugs Moran. Former members of the...

. In order to support herself she takes a job as a secretary

Secretary

A secretary, or administrative assistant, is a person whose work consists of supporting management, including executives, using a variety of project management, communication & organizational skills. These functions may be entirely carried out to assist one other employee or may be for the benefit...

 to married attorney

Lawyer

A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...

 Lloyd Rogers, who finds himself attracted to her but keeps his feelings secret out of respect for his wife. Jack Merrick, Jr., the playboy son of a wealthy client, elopes with Mary, but his disapproving father interferes and has the marriage annulled

Annulment

Annulment is a legal procedure for declaring a marriage null and void. Unlike divorce, it is usually retroactive, meaning that an annulled marriage is considered to be invalid from the beginning almost as if it had never taken place...

.

Soon after Mary discovers she is pregnant and decides to have the child without informing Jack, who marries Florence Carson, a woman of his own social class. She later is left crippled by an automobile accident.

When Lloyd dies, he leaves Mary the bulk of his estate, but his wife, believing Mary's son is her husband's illegitimate child, attempts to overturn the will.

When Jack and his father learn the boy is his, the elder Merrick institutes proceedings to have Mary declared unfit and the child removed from her custody. Unable to withstand the stress of the legal proceedings, Mary allows Jack and Florence to have the child and leaves for Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

. When Florence dies, Jack follows Mary in the hope he'll find her and reunite her with their son.

Principal cast

• Bette Davis
  Bette Davis
  Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional...
  
   ..... Mary Donnell
• Henry Fonda
  Henry Fonda
  Henry Jaynes Fonda was an American film and stage actor.Fonda made his mark early as a Broadway actor. He also appeared in 1938 in plays performed in White Plains, New York, with Joan Tompkins...
  
   ..... Jack Merrick, Jr.
• Anita Louise
  Anita Louise
  -Life and career:Born Anita Louise Fremault in New York, New York, she made her acting debut on Broadway at the age of six, and within a year was appearing regularly in Hollywood films...
  
   ..... Florence Carson Merrick
• Ian Hunter
  Ian Hunter (actor)
  Ian Hunter was a British character actor.Among dozens of film roles, his best-remembered appearances include That Certain Woman with Bette Davis, The Adventures of Robin Hood , The Little Princess and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde...
  
   ..... Lloyd Rogers
• Donald Crisp
  Donald Crisp
  Donald Crisp was an English film actor. He was also an early motion picture producer, director and screenwriter...
  
   ..... Jack Merrick, Sr.
• Jeff York
  Jeff York
  Jeff York was an American film and television actor who began his career in the late 1930s using his given name Granville Owen Schofield...
  
   ..... Reporter (uncredited)

Principal production credits

• Producers
  Film producer
  A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
  
   ..... Hal B. Wallis
  Hal B. Wallis
  Hal B. Wallis was an American film producer.-Career:Harold Brent Wallis was born in Chicago in 1898. His family moved in 1922 to Los Angeles, California, where he found work as part of the publicity department at Warner Bros...
  
  , Jack L. Warner
• Original Music
  Film score
  A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...
  
   ..... Max Steiner
  Max Steiner
  Max Steiner was an Austrian composer of music for theatre productions and films. He later became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Trained by the great classical music composers Brahms and Mahler, he was one of the first composers who primarily wrote music for motion pictures, and as...
  
  
• Cinematography
  Cinematography
  Cinematography is the making of lighting and camera choices when recording photographic images for cinema. It is closely related to the art of still photography...
  
   ..... Ernest Haller
  Ernest Haller
  Ernest Haller, A.S.C. also credited as Ernie B. Haller, , was an American cinematographer.Born in Los Angeles, California, Haller joined Biograph Studios as an actor in 1914, then began to freelance as a cinematographer...
  
  
• Art Direction
  Art director
  The art director is a person who supervise the creative process of a design.The term 'art director' is a blanket title for a variety of similar job functions in advertising, publishing, film and television, the Internet, and video games....
  
   ..... Max Parker
• Costume Design
  Costume design
  Costume design is the fabrication of apparel for the overall appearance of a character or performer. This usually involves researching, designing and building the actual items from conception. Costumes may be for a theater or cinema performance but may not be limited to such...
  
   ..... Orry-Kelly
  Orry-Kelly
  Orry-Kelly was the professional name of Orry George Kelly , a prolific Hollywood costume designer....
  
  

Critical reception

In his review in the New York Times, Frank S. Nugent declared, "For all the heaviness of its theme, for the hopeless monotony of its heroine's ill-fortune, the picture has dramatic value . . . Miss Davis performs valiantly as usual, giving color to a role which, in lesser hands, might have been colorless."

Time

Time (magazine)

Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...

described it as "what is known as a players' picture; everyone gets the call, and everyone responds with all the theatrical craft he can summon up."

Variety

Variety (magazine)

Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...

said, "The production has class and atmosphere . . . a finely made picture which deserves and will get extended first runs and which shoves Bette Davis a round or two higher as box office lure . . . [It] demands more of her talent than any film in which she has appeared . . . She displays screen acting of the highest order."

Of the film, Bette Davis herself said it "was certainly not one of my favorite scripts. There was a falseness to the whole project. But I did meet and work with Edmund Goulding for the first time. He concentrated on attractive shots of me - in other words, gave me the star treatment. It was the first time I had this. I was always a member of the cast - a leading member - but not made special in the way Goulding made me special in this film." The two went on to collaborate on three more films: Dark Victory

Dark Victory

Dark Victory is a 1939 American drama film directed by Edmund Goulding and starring Bette Davis, George Brent, Humphrey Bogart, and Ronald Reagan...

(1939), The Old Maid (1939), and The Great Lie

The Great Lie

The Great Lie is a 1941 American drama film directed by Edmund Goulding and starring Bette Davis, George Brent, and Mary Astor. The screenplay by Lenore J...

(1941).

External links

• That Certain Woman at the Internet Movie Database