Back Street (1961 film)

This was a trademark of Ross Hunter's remakes of older "weepies"; he employed the same method in Lana Turner's versions of Imitation of Life and Madame X.

Wealthy department-store heir Paul Saxon has a romantic fling with a Nebraska dress-shop owner, Rae Smith, who breaks it off when she discovers he is married.

Paul continues to woo her, explaining that his alcoholic wife Liz won't grant him a divorce and is unstable, having tried to commit suicide.

Liz makes a public scene humiliating Rae at a charity fashion show featuring her designs, purchasing the closing creation, a wedding gown, for $10,000.

[7] In The New York Times, film critic Bosley Crowther wrote: "Producer Ross Hunter has crammed so much swank and so much plush Parisian elegance that we wonder he didn't change the title to something like 'Rue du Bac.'

Never has Miss Hurst's little lady (represented heretofore by Irene Dunne and Margaret Sullavan, vis-à-vis the respective consorts of John Boles and Charles Boyer) been set up in such elaborate diggings or lavished with such expensive gifts as is Susan Hayward by John Gavin in this elaborate and expensive color film.