(3 of 3)
Street of Women (Warner) has a definite plot idea: what happens when a married skyscraper tycoon (Alan Dinehart) loves a dress-designer (Kay Francis) at the same time that his daughter and the designer's young brother want to marry? The elders protest their situation is beautiful because sincere. Dinehart will get a divorce after the juniors are married. The juniors are severe, disregarding the utilitarian fact that Miss Francis has inspired the once futile Mr. Dinehart to build skyscrapers. A friend (Roland Young) is noncommittal. The juniors become peremptory: the elders part, suffer. A moral answer is given: the juniors have the prior "right to happiness." But the boy rushes to South America to earn money to pay back Tycoon Dinehart, whom he thinks he owes for his education, thus shifting the moral emphasis to money as evil's root. The juniors come together again, drive emotionally at 70 m.p.h. until they crash, almost killing the girl. Someone having almost died, cinemorality now allows happiness all around. The original plot idea, no nearer solution, is dropped. Typical shot: the daughter telling her father, "There can't be any happiness in something that's not right.''
Attorney for the Defense (Columbia) trails inexpertly in the wake of the recent stampede of trial lawyer pictures. In this repetition Edmund Lowe is so good as a Prosecuting Attorney that he becomes an attorney for the defense to save accused men from prosecuting attorneys like himself, adopts the family of the last man he convicted. Years pass. Edmund Lowe's onetime girl (Evelyn Brent) wants to recover "the papers": an envelope stolen from her current sweetheart's safe. She lisps threats, he is rude. She recovers "the papers" from Edmund Lowe's adopted son, a football hero (Donald Dilloway) who betrays emotion (like Sooky in Skippy) by jumping up & down. But presently she has died a violent death, apparently by Donald Dilloway's hand, and Martyr Edmund Lowe is on trial as both defendant and defendant's attorney. It turns out that a third party killed Miss Brent for no specified reason. Edmund Lowe marries his secretary (Constance Cummings) who has had no notable part in the proceedings to this point. All the actors are industrious but the material is banal, the direction clodhopper, the dialog dimwitted.