bkoganbing If I had been Irene Dunne in The Secret Of Madame Blanche I might have thought twice about eloping with charming wastrel Phillips Holmes.. Sadly she met his ironfisted father Lionel Atwill only after they were married. Dunne plays a singer and does get to show her vocal talents in this film which is always appreciated. Holmes who does nothing, but spend dear old dad's money in various hedonistic pursuits. Of course dad does not even try to channel Holmes into some useful profession where he could have an income. What he wants and frankly I thought this a hoot, he wants to have him get a seat in Parliament with of course an arranged marriage with a woman of the proper station. Atwill has really no redeeming qualities as a father. He just wants to dominate his kid. Eventually he forces Dunne to give her child over to him to be raised in the image. As the kid grows up to be Douglas Walton he truly is a chip off the old Atwill/Holmes block.Fast forward to the World War I years and Walton while AWOL gets himself in a big jackpot and he also meets Dunne with no idea she's his mom. Atwill told him she was dead.I won't go any farther except to say that the whole thing has a Madame X quality to it. It does work out better for the principal cast members.The Secret Of Madame Blanche is a property very unlikely to be remade. Still the cast led by Dunne, Holmes, Atwill, and Walton does pull it together.

gkeith_1 Spoilers. Observations.Creepy pop in law. He steals the baby. How dare he? He doesn't know how to raise male children, without spoiling them and making them into total wastrels.Irene Dunne always lovely. Here, she falls for a puny, dorky rich kid, son of the above mentioned stupid idiot. He has no career, and apparently no education. Pop won't give him any more money, so he offs himself and leaves his wife, Irene, to raise the baby as best she can.Irene comes back from performing in a sleazy entertainment spot, finding the grandfatherly slimeball getting custody of her beloved baby boy. Irene goes to grandpa's home to almost beg him to see the baby, but Grandpapa Dearest says no dice.Irene goes on to toil for many years in rathole after rathole, entertaining and becoming what looks sort of like a madam in a brothel, or as she describes later, a restaurant with rooms upstairs.Looks like the young WWI soldier wants to take HER upstairs, but actually he wants a room for himself and his teenage girlfriend who has run away from her parents.More spoilers. Fast forward. Girlfriend goes home. Girlfriend's father comes looking for soldier who stole away his daughter. Dad wants to beat the living stuffing out of soldier. All of a sudden, kerblam. Gunshot. Soldier has gun in his hand, and the father is succumbed on the floor.Girlfriend had given Irene name of soldier. Irene realizes it is her long lost baby son. She tells police she did the deed, and that the soldier got away.Courtroom scene. Irene has confessed to the crime, to protect her son. Judge figures out the connection. Soldier is in the room, and he realizes Irene is his long lost mother, about whom he was told by creepy grandpa that she was no good. Grandpa, Irene's pop in law, is also in room, and cringes/realizes that she was the young woman married to his son against his wishes.Judge says Irene is innocent. Next scene, Irene visits soldier in jail. He didn't get capital punishment or a very long sentence; apparently, the verdict was self-defense, manslaughter or something like that. He only gets around two years.Irene baked him a chocolate cake, but wasn't allowed to bring it into the jail. Her son loves chocolate cake.

audiemurph It may be difficult to get past the premise of "Madame Blanche": movies always require a suspension of belief to some degree, but I had a very hard time with this one. I can't swallow the idea that Irene Dunne would give up her career to marry Phillip Holmes' snivelling, substance-free, work-allergic wimp of a man, after knowing him for about 8 seconds. Did young people in the 30's really marry so quickly without getting to know their potential spouses?Anyway, Holmes quickly justifies are suspicions. His father disinherits him, so angry is he that Holmes has married so far below his station. Holmes does nothing to make us feel any sympathy for him, but Irene Dunne loves him so! A real unappealingly weak character, he is.The dialogue is so insipid and without drama in the first half of the film that I seriously wondered whether I had the will to see it through.Happily, there is much improvement in the second half. Dunne's soldier-son, played by Douglas Walton, starts off as weak and selfish a person as his father (Holmes) was, but he does grow up and change nicely, and is somewhat appealing. Dunne is fabulous and convincing as an older woman - actually, impressively so - it is hard to recognize her as an attractive younger woman in her "old age" make-up! Lionel Atwill is absolutely evil as Holmes' brutally heartless father. The best scene in the film actually occurs in the first half: look for the close-up, upper-bodies -only shot of Dunne and Holmes in what will be their final parting; the entire shot is beautifully and slightly and softly out of focus, and is quite effective and touching.Overall, this is a mixed bag, but if you love early sound films just for their own sake, or are a fan of Irene Dunne, then you will appreciate this little soap opera.

Neil Doyle IRENE DUNNE had THE SECRET OF MADAME BLANCHE. It's the forerunner of all those Madame X stories that gave actresses meaty roles in tear-jerkers. For Olivia de Havilland it was TO EACH HIS OWN. For Lana Turner and earlier, Ruth Chatterton, it was MADAME X. For Helen Hayes it was THE SIN OF MADELON CLAUDET. These were the kind of stories that spanned some twenty years, always about women who were cheated out of mother love--women who fell in love unwisely and were then cheated by circumstances.LIONEL ATWILL is the rich father whose son (PHILLIPS HOLMES) has fallen in love with a cabaret singer and he opposes the match from the start, threatening to stop giving his son handouts to keep them solvent. The son is destitute when he learns that she's about to have a baby and finally commits suicide. The years fly by and Dunne is now a working woman in London at a not very reputable establishment populated by servicemen. It's World War I and one of the patrons is a young man who makes a fuss over not being given a room. He turns out to be her son and she is soon protecting him from a murder charge.It's a pretty plot-heavy melodrama with enough twists and turns to keep the viewer interested, but you have to have a taste for these mother/son tear-jerkers to truly enjoy this sort of film. The final scene with mother and son reunited at a prison after a stormy trial, is reminiscent of MADAME X--but at least here, the son learns the true identity of his mother.