Lupino's dress rehearsal for Hard, Fast and Beautiful might have been this almost forgotten film that deserves another look. In The Films of the Forties author Tony Thomas notes not only the fine performances but sharp cinematography by James Wong Howe and Vincent Sherman's "searing and uncompromising" direction. Lupino plays a woman who, looking for a way out of her drab existence in a poverty-stricken milltown, channels her own frustrated ambitions into the career of her semi-talented younger sister. They hitch their wagon to a couple of unsuspecting asses, the song-and-dance team of Jack Carson and Dennis Morgan, and a few lives are destroyed in the process. Here is an example of Lupino in the kind of role Warners wouldn't even give Bette Davis. "Miss Lupino's performance as a female Svengali is etched in venom" (N.Y. Times).