The first of three screen adaptations of Fanny Hurst's shameless weepy remains for most critics the best. Directed by melodrama master John M. Stahl, it retains a delicate awareness of the social implications in the story of a woman who spends twenty-five years as the "other woman" to an ambitious banker. As Ray Schmidt-whose masculine name cuts her no swath in a man's world-Irene Dunne earns our tears precisely with the subtlety with which she ac- knowledges, even as she lives it, the double standard working against her. Stahl develops a tender and convincing affair between the lovers and if John Boles doesn't seem quite worthy of his costar, it is only fitting. Moreover, the trepidations of Boles' Walter Saxel-who fears the repercussions to his career if he divorces his wife, and so goes on to become the father of two-seem ironically justified by such social barometers as the New York Times film review, which rushed to judge the selfish cad where Stahl was content to observe. ("The efforts to elicit sympathy for Saxel are pathetic...He delights in having chocolate and gingerbread with Ray in her apartment, for which he pays the rent..." etc.)