Comet Over Broadway (1938)

A small town housewife (Kay Francis) has dreams of becoming a professional actress on the stage. When a stage actor (Ian Keith) makes advances to her, her husband (John Litel) accidentally kills the actor in a scuffle. After he's sentenced to life imprisonment, his wife promises to spend the rest of her life to get him out of jail. But after she achieves her goal of becoming a famous actress and falling in love with another man (Ian Hunter), she must make a decision. Based on a short story by Faith Baldwin and directed by Busby Berkeley. Wow, this melodrama has everything but the kitchen sink! Kay Francis goes from a small town housewife to burlesque to vaudeville to the toast of the Broadway and London stages in record time. Of course, she has to farm out her baby daughter to someone else to raise as the kid would hold her back. So what if the kid grows up thinking that someone else is her mother and becomes attached to her. Kay Francis suffers and suffers in Orry Kelly's gowns till the self sacrificing ending which seems appalling to 2019 sensibilities. I'm sorry but living a lie and destroying two lives doing the "right" thing isn't noble, it's damaging. That being said, in spite of the masochistic and maudlin vibes, I actually enjoyed it. With Donald Crisp, Minna Gombell, Melville Cooper, Sybil Jason and Vera Lewis.