AllMovie

"You only live once, kid. Grab yourself everything you can get and never feel sorry for anyone but yourself," Louise Glaum advises her protégée Peggy Pearce early on in this moralistic tale, and as anyone who has ever seen a melodrama (or All About Eve for that matter) has already guessed, those words come back to haunt her. One of Theda Bara's more successful rivals, Glaum is at her peak in this rare surviving silent film and gives a remarkably restrained performance, all things considered. C. Gardner Sullivan's screenplay is perhaps no great shakes and the supporting cast, including future star director Irving Cummings, mugs shamelessly at times, but Glaum manages to make the audience care about her fate, despite the inevitability of it all.