In the creation of Forbidden Frank Capra candidly admitted that the story was ripped off from Fanny Hurst's Back Street. Too bad he couldn't get to do the real thing.<br /><br />Forbidden was made at a time when Frank Capra was involved with both Lucille Reyburn who eventually he married and his star Barbara Stanwyck. Capra had just directed Stanwyck in The Miracle Woman and had hopes for this venture which he had the original story idea which was scripted by Jo Swerling.<br /><br />As for Stanwyck according to a biography about her, she was involved with Capra because of her abusive and jealous first husband Frank Fay who literally terrorized her on the set of his film. I'm sure his presence must have been a distraction.<br /><br />But I would venture to say that even if things were on an even keel for Stanwyck and Capra, I don't think that would have saved this film. It's melodramatic corn which I think today's audiences would find laughable. Stanwyck plays a spinster librarian who decides to take her savings and splurge them on a cruise to Havana. There she meets Adolphe Menjou who is also on vacation and traveling incognito.<br /><br />He's looking for a little frolic himself. In this rather frank film before The Code, Menjou hasn't been getting any kanoodling from wife Dorothy Peterson who was injured in an automobile accident. He and Stanwyck have a daughter together and to save his and her reputation, the daughter is adopted by her real father and Peterson.<br /><br />In the meantime and on the rebound Stanwyck marries her boss on the newspaper she works for, Ralph Bellamy. Bellamy is not in a typical Ralph Bellamy goof role, he's got a streak of jealousy in him as well. It doesn't go really good for anybody.<br /><br />Everyone tries their best, but the film lays there like a melodramatic lump. Even the best directors turn out a clinker now and then and Capra was learning both his craft and his message at this time.<br /><br />And juggling two women as well, what a guy.