THE LIE
By
Today's version of The Old Maid by the author of Clementine and Take Care of My Little Girl springs from Kate's bewildered family life, frustrated dreams of romance and the unfulfilled promise of a party with her father on her 17th birthday. Myopic and disturbed, Kate asks for -- and gets trouble from another girl's beau and her resulting pregnancy demands sacrifices from her parents to send her away to have her baby and give it up for adoption. With Jennie's birth, Kate blackmails them to pass themselves off as Jennie's parents and returns home to build up a successful life in Aunt Lou's dress shop. And when Jennie is 17, Kate insists on a real party for her ""sister's"" birthday but it's not the success she had dreamed of. So that her mother, still childishly cunning, is firm when Kate has a chance to marry widower Overholt and turns her out for Jennie's good. Compensation, rather than melodrama here, in unsparing but never uncaring terms, takes care of a social problem believably and with some practicality.