Nervous about audience reaction to her performance, Davis opted not to attend a preview of the film in Santa Barbara, although her mother Ruth and husband Harmon O. Nelson went. Ruth later related, "For one hour and a half of horrible realism, we sat riveted without speaking a word, with only a fleeting glance now and then at each other. We left the theater in absolute silence. Neither of us knew what to think, for we felt the picture would make or break her, but would the public like the unpleasant story as well as the people at the preview seemed to?" Upon arriving home, her husband told Davis he thought her performance, while "painfully sincere", might harm her career.