The title is taken from a line in FDR's second inaugural address, "I see one third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished..."; the subject is the very ill-housed in New York's tenements. Sylvia Sidney stars as a young woman desperate to escape the slums. When her little brother Joey (15-year-old Sidney Lumet) is crippled in a tenement fire, she meets the owner of this and many other decrepit buildings, a man (Leif Erikson) who happens also to be Joey's benefactor, and also to be falling in love with her. Romance, however, does not take the day. Shot in New York, the film was based on a radical stage play produced by the WPA's Federal Theater Project. Even toned down in the screen adaptation, its socialist message was deemed "too hot to handle" and scenes were reshot before release. Patrick Loughney notes, "It's very interesting, and rarely seen. Sylvia Sidney never looked more beautiful."Preserved from original negative.