I have to agree with the majority of other reviews posted here. This film gets off to a cracking good start. So good that I wondered how they were going to keep up the strong pace. They didn't!Now I know why I had not heard of this film before seeing it on TCM. Maybe Warners buried it early after release, yet it did display some 'crowd pleasing' attributes.So confusing was this film, we had to stop and re-watch parts over to see if what 'seemed' to be happening, actually was!Great cast, great production values, great cinematography, great music, but oh, that overly odd, quite unbelievably resolved story!

Most of your reviewers certainly had an aversion to this film. One of them even asserted it had no music despite an excellent score by Max Steiner. I thought Barbara Stanwyck with all her emotional storms and plottings really sizzled. This must have been one of her best roles ever. I couldn't stop watching it though I came in somewhere in a courtroom scene after the beginning and missed all the prologues. I thought the emotional relationships of everybody involved were strong and fascinating. In contrast to most of your reviewers I thought the plot lines got wrapped up satisfactorily and clearly and I was quite happy with how everything finally turned out. Especially with Stanwyck and Brent trying finally to make a go of it basically because of their child. Call me soft hearted and sentimental but I felt for them and their final solution. Though this film rubbed most of your reviewers the wrong way I loved it and thought it was great.

I thought this movie was a Betty Grable-or-someone movie, maybe The Dolly Sisters type movie, or some song and dance 1942 outing to relieve the seriousness of wartime, but boy was I mistaken. Still, finding out that it was a drama piece actually good by Barbara Stanwyck standards, I decided to watch it. That is, after I turned on the DVR recording and found out the drama part by the host's introduction. I was intrigued enough to watch. I found the movie very interesting and impossible to stop watching. It started out with the Lusitania disaster and a wealthy woman's being killed on that unfortunate ship. Next, a World War I era soldier, in a wealthy mansion, was signing his last will and testament before he went off to war to get even with those enemies who torpedoed the ship. I looked for officer's insignia on his uniform, but didn't see any. I assumed that being so wealthy, he wouldn't just be an enlisted man. Turns out he was a major. Anyway, he meets his demise after going off to the front in World War One, and his three minor daughters are orphans. The woman killed on the Lusitania was his wife and the girls' mother. Next thing we know, the girls are grown up and supposedly penniless. An evil bad guy is trying to take away their mansion, and we spend most of the film seeing people trying to avoid him. He is successful and handsome, a namesake of our current basketball guy Charles Barclay/Barkley (?). The sisters have secrets from each other. All have been married. The eldest secretly married the bad guy, and had a child as a result of the first night of the marriage. The second sister married an English lord, but he is on the other side of the pond while she makes a play for the youngest sister's boyfriend. The youngest sister is married but trying to get an annulment while messing around with Gig Young (played by Gig Young, lol #^$%%r!!!). Later she says she got an annulment with some money, apparently to pay a lawyer, but it is fuzzy as to how this happened. I will leave plot holes to the other reviewers. Anyway, her marriage is over, and does she marry Gig Young? I don't know. The middle sister: her husband dies in a British plane crash, but she is SOL with Gig Young as he is in love with the youngest. As for the oldest, Fiona (Barbara Stanwyck), first she supposedly divorced (??) the bad guy, then at the end he says he's still her husband. Supposedly they marry/re-marry/cohabitate (??), and plan to live with the son they finally admit to having. Poor little kid. He wanted Gig Young for his uncle. I thought the monkey in the zoo was really cute. This movie was funny, maudlin, historic, etc. I enjoyed all the lawyers, especially Donald Crisp and Gene Lockhart.

Here is one of those movies spoiled by the studio's insistence on a happy ending. Conflicts which have stretched out for years are settled in a few minutes. It would have been far more interesting to inject a tone of ambiguity. The talented Barbara Stanwyck is undone by a sudden metamorphosis from independent and assertive woman to a compliant female of the kind she has put down all her life. Brent, as usual, is well over his head and then there is the ludicrous situation of Gig Young playing a character named Gig Young. Someone mentions "Gig Young" and then who appears but Gig Young, the actor! Worth seeing though far below what it could have been.