MOVIE · 1933

Ex-Lady

ComedyDramaRomance67 min

Helen Bauer doesn’t believe in marriage, but after living happily with her boyfriend, she agrees to make it official and finds that the arrangement changes the balance between them. Bette Davis is Helen, a commercial illustrator with firm ideas about independence; Gene Raymond’s Don Peterson, an advertising writer, wants respectability and children along with romance. As the newlyweds try to build an advertising agency together, jealousy and infidelity begin to strain the relationship. Frank McHugh turns up as their perpetually tipsy friend Van, hovering at the edges while Helen answers Don’s betrayals with a relationship of her own.