Plot
In Richmond, Virginia, Asa (Frank Craven) and Lavinia (Billie Burke) (Fitzroy) Timberlake gave their two daughters male names: Roy (Olivia de Havilland) and Stanley (Bette Davis). The movie opens with the young women as adults. Asa Timberlake has recently lost his piece of a tobacco company to his former partner William Fitzroy (Charles Coburn), his wife's brother. Roy, a successful interior decorator, is married to Dr. Peter Kingsmill (Dennis Morgan). Stanley Timberlake is engaged to attorney Craig Fleming (George Brent). The night before her wedding, Stanley runs off with her sister's husband Peter. After Roy divorces him, Peter and Stanley marry and move to Baltimore.
Roy encounters Fleming again after some time and they begin dating. He hires Parry Clay (Ernest Anderson) to work in his law office while the young man attends law school. Clay is the son of the Timberlake parents' family maid, Minerva Clay (Hattie McDaniel). William Fitzroy, Lavinia's brother and Asa's former partner in a tobacco business, dotes on his niece Stanley and gives her expensive presents. He says he will retain Fleming as his attorney if he agrees to stop representing poor clients. When Fleming refuses, Roy Timberlake is impressed and decides to accept him in marriage.
In Baltimore, Stanley and Peter's marriage suffers from his heavy drinking and her excessive spending. Peter commits suicide. Shaken, Stanley returns to her home town with Roy. After she recovers, Stanley decides to win back Fleming. While discussing her late husband's life insurance with Fleming at his office, Stanley invites him to join her later for dinner. When he fails to come to the restaurant, she becomes drunk. While driving home, she hits and kills a child.
Witnesses recognize Stanley's car and the police go to question her. Stanley insists she had loaned her car to Parry Clay the night of the accident. Minerva Clay tells Roy that her son was home with her all evening. Stanley refuses to admit her responsibility although Roy arranges for her to see Clay at the jail (he is being held as a suspect). Later Fleming tells her he has already questioned the bartender at the restaurant and knows Stanley left drunk. Fleming plans to take Stanley to the district attorney, but she escapes to her uncle's house and pleads for his help. Having just discovered he has only six months to live, Fitzroy is too distraught to do anything. The police arrive at Fitzroy's house and Stanley leaves; in trying to escape, she crashes her car and is killed.
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—John Ashbery (b. 1927)