My Sin

This was Bankheads second talkie after her debut in THE NIGHT ANGEL. MY SIN opens in Panama where March, an attorney who has fallen upon drunken times, is imbibing his way to destruction. He encounters Bankhead, a nitery chirper, whose mate is hounding her for money. She gets into a battle with the man and shoots him dead. But her reputation is such in Panama that no one will undertake her defense until March decides to clean up his act and handle her case. He goes from besotted counselor to another Clarence Darrow in a few minutes and manages to get her acquitted. This case puts him back on his game and he is soon riding high again as a lawyer, so he lends her enough money to return to New York where she becomes a high-powered interior decorator and is on the verge of marrying a wealthy young man who comes from a socially upstanding family. March goes to New York, gets in touch with Bankhead, and tells her that she would be wise to come clean about her history because those things have a nasty habit of coming up just when you think theyve been buried. She chooses to keep mum about the matter in Panama until both she and March are spotted at a party by a former acquaintance from Panama and she decides to tell her new beau the truth. Although the fiance, Scott Kolk, says that he loves Bankhead despite anything she may have done long ago, she gets the feeling that he is not quite telling the truth and leaves the 24-karat marriage proposal in favor of March, whom she has loved all along but didnt acknowledge until the last reel. Bankheads voice was already husky but nowhere near as deep as it wound up to be. Her first name was so unusual that she successfully sued a shampoo company when they attempted to use the name, Tallulah, to represent a tube of their product. Her contention was that since her name was a one-of-a-kind, it indicated that she was lending her support to the shampoo. (Verleiher-Text)