My Reputation

Wartime soap-romance with Stanwyck, and she's excellent even by her own lofty standards, as a young Chicago widow with children whom the Lake Shore Drive set doesn't know what to do with. Her pompous mama, an amusing Lucille Watson, and her two sensible sons want her to be a conventional widow. Then she meets George Brent... The mid-century problem of what role a woman without a man is supposed to play is dealt with with some insight, and it must have resonated mightily in 1946, with so many women thrust into this unfamiliar territory. Brent, so handsome in his youth, was by this time puffy and artificial-looking, and isn't an ideal love object. Nor is Eve Arden given enough to do in a conventional best-pal role. But Stanwyck's so graceful and sturdy, and the Warners production so assured, that you stick with it and root for the pair to triumph over their gossipy milieu. It ends pretty abruptly and not altogether convincingly, but there are many good scenes along the way, and we sure do love Babs.