Adapted from the novel Bad Girl by Viña Delmar (and also on the play that was based on the novel, which I didn't read)
Eddie and Dot fall in love and are essentially forced to get married after spending the night together. Despite this rocky start, their marriage is fairly happy for a while, but their lack of communication skills threatens to ruin their relationship, and possibly their lives, when Dot becomes pregnant with a baby that each thinks the other doesn't want.
This is the first winner of this award that I hadn't seen before. As I was reading the book, I kept thinking, How in the world did they make this into a movie? A significant portion of the book is characters' thoughts contrasted with their actions, and I was afraid the movie was going to mostly consist of voice-overs of internal monologues, which would have ruined the mood. Instead, the film added conversations between one of the leads and a secondary character when the other lead wasn't there, which effectively conveyed the communication breakdown without the cheesiness of narrated thoughts.
There were also several other changes, and they almost all served to make the film more entertaining, less thought-provoking, and/or more dramatic than the book. For instance, the character of Dot is far wittier in the movie than she is in the book. The novel portrays her as rather naïve, overly trusting, and unsure what's going on; in the film she seems more worldly, and always has a good comeback, which is definitely more fun to watch than if they'd kept her the same. Another major change is the way Dot deals with finding out she's pregnant. In both versions, she and Eddie each think the other doesn't want it and are afraid that Dot might die in childbirth, but in the book Dot goes to the extreme of almost having an illegal abortion. She consults some of her friends, whose roles were either eliminated or greatly reduced in the film, who tell her it's a good idea, and she even meets with a really sketchy doctor who agrees to do it, until her friend Edna - the only character with any sense in the book, although she's kind of annoying in the movie - wisely points out that it's much safer for Dot to have the baby with the help of a competent doctor than to have the kind of abortion that was available in the 1920s. All of that was cut from the movie.
The movie gives Dot a doctor she doesn't like and has Eddie work nights, and even do some boxing, to save up to give her a better doctor; in the book she has a great doctor who was recommended by Edna that they save up for together. The book doesn't have anything about Eddie trying to start his own shop and then using all his savings to buy furniture for a new surprise apartment for Dot instead, like he does in the movie. They do get a new apartment in the book, but it's Dot's idea, and all the furniture comes for free from Edna. I think this particular change was meant to further highlight how their best intentions come back to bite them when they don't communicate properly: Dot's afraid to tell Eddie she's pregnant, but he knows she's unhappy about something, so he spends all their money to make her happy, when they really should be saving their money for the baby. It works well in the film; it's just different from the book.
Overall, the tone of the film is much lighter and less philosophical than the book, which is fairly typical. Fittingly, the movie has a much more explicitly happy ending. Both versions end with Eddie not caring that the baby is drooling on him, but in the movie, right before that, they have a moment when they're both like, "Oh, I thought you didn't want the baby," which doesn't happen in the book. It's a minor thing, but the movie implies that the couple's communication skills are improving, whereas the audience gets no such encouragement from the book. The story was definitely Hollywood-ized when it was made into a movie, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Some of the changes were a bit disappointing - I would have been interested to see them tackle the abortion issue in the film - but not too surprising given the era.
I didn't bother tracking down the play, since I thought reading the novel would be sufficient, but now I'm kind of curious if it was more like the book or the movie. So I may have to find out someday. But first I'm going to read and watch Little Women, which is probably going to take a while, so I'm not sure when you'll hear from me again, but it will happen eventually.
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