Ann Harding was nearing the end of her tenure as a star at RKO Pictures when she made this romantic melodrama leavened with a healthy dose of comedy. That was a welcome change from her usual maudlin soap operas. This time she's the wife of a doctor (Herbert Marshall) who succumbs to the seven-year itch with ambitious sportswoman Margaret Lindsay. She nobly consents to a divorce so Marshall can marry Lindsay, then supplies a comforting shoulder when he discovers his new wife is just a social climber. Harding had been RKO's first female star in the pre-Code era, playing well-born women falling from social grace. The arrival of the Motion Picture Production Code in 1934 blunted the effectiveness of her usual vehicles, and this would be her next-to-last picture for RKO. Fortunately, she picked P.J. Wolfson's story "The Indestructible Mrs. Talbot," which gave her some opportunities to play a down to earth shooting craps and drinking canned beer (which led to complaints from glass blowers whose livelihood was threatened by the recent arrival of canned beer). The film also offers comic support from Edward Ellis as her blunt-spoken father-in-law and Walter Abel as a suitor with a cadre of drinking buddies.

By Frank Miller