D: W. S. Van Dyke II. Spencer Tracy, Hedy Lamarr, Verree Teasdale, Kent Taylor, Laraine Day, Mona Barrie, Louis Calhern, Marjorie Main, Frances Drake, Jack Carson. Disappointing soaper with dedicated doctor Tracy sacrificing all for Lamarr, who at first isn't grateful. Long in production, with innumerable behind-the-scenes changes, this was a notorious dud in 1940.

D: Edmund Goulding. Mary Astor, Bette Davis, George Brent, Lucile Watson, Hattie McDaniel, Grant Mitchell, Jerome Cowan. Brent marries Davis when alliance with Astor is annulled. He is lost in plane crash, leaving Davis and pregnant Astor to battle each other and the elements. Well-mounted soaper won Astor an Oscar as fiery concert pianist.

D: Alfred Green. Barbara Stanwyck, George Brent, Donald Cook, Margaret Lindsay, Douglass Dumbrille, John Wayne. Pre-Production Code item has Stanwyck bartending at a speakeasy, then literally sleeping her way floor by floor to the top of a N.Y.C. office building. Great first half gives way to sappily moralistic conclusion. Wayne's coat-and-tie bit--as one of the office help used by the heroine--is a hoot. Even harsher version discovered in 2004 runs about 5m. longer.