of the marriage of a New York speakeasy owner on his way up in the world with a self-destructive socialite on her way down. It failed to attract audiences, though it won the admiration of some reviewers.

With 1926's The Silver Cord, starring Laura Hope Crews, Howard had a major hit. This drama about a mother who is pathologically close to her sons and works to undermine their romances, the result of a decade fascinated with Freud, Oedipal complexes, and family dysfunction. Both Howard's works