Back Street Reviews

This restrained, luminous version of Fannie Hurst's oft-filmed saga is easily the best. BACK STREET's success is largely due to the tragic nobility Boyer and Sullavan invest this story of a woman who remains devoted to a married man. In real life, both actors' fates had the same elements of sad inevitibility: Boyer and Sullavan died from barbiturate overdoses which were self-inflicted; Boyer in a depression after his wife passed away and Sullavan as a result of her frustration with increasing deafness. Her complicated nature and tempestuous life was chronicled by her daughter in the book Haywire. Sullavan's first three husbands were Henry Fonda, William Wyler, and Leland Hayward.