Review of The Forbidden Street

SPOILER This film is a little bit hard to get hold of nowadays, but very worth the watch and purchase. Please rally to get it redistributed. Maureen O'Hara is Adelaide Culver, an upper class Londoner from a very respectable victorian household who is taking art lessons inhome from impassioned impoverished artist Herbert Lambert(Dana Andrews)who resides in a lively ghetto of ne'er do-wells behind the genteel rowhouses whence her family resides. She immediately falls in love with him and decides against her parents and siblings protests to be his wife and live with him there, mostly for worse. He warns her that he is a drunk, but she will not listen. He proves to drink too much and work too little, and her trust fund is dwindling. She says he must go back to giving art lessons which he abhorred and he refuses. He is drunk and tumbles to his death down the long steep stair. A crowd immediately arrives and the constable begins questions. Mrs Mounsey(Dame Sybil Thorndike)across the way declares she saw the whole thing, and that it was an accidental death. She then forces her friendship upon Adelaide, begging and insisting into an odd relationship based on blackmail. To the rescue comes Gilbert Lauderdale(also Dana Andrews), a good natured mailroom clerk and barrister who tells Mounsey to get lost or else. Among is a wonderful Moliere puppet show featuring the noble French marionettes Herbert had created as a dreamy eyed college student in Paris, which he gave up on but were resurrected after his tragic demise. The parents have bought a country estate in the Cotswolds and brother Treff from Oxford sees the show and loves it. Upon discovering it has been put on by sis he lets her know she's been missing all these years and is welcome home. She goes to her parents with Gilbert and they welcome him into the family to a happy ending.