The White Parade (1934)

 

It would be unfair to call The White Parade a “lost film” since there is one print that survives. It’s housed at the UCLA Film Archive, and you can watch it if you make an appointment and agree to follow the rules the archive has. Of course, that means a trip to Westwood for what will likely be a full day if you don’t live in Los Angeles, so I’m not likely to make the trek until I reach a point of desperation I’m not currently feeling. It might not be truly lost, but it’s certainly not readily or easily available to very many people if it’s locked away in an archive.

The plot, according to IMDB, concerns “the hopeful, ambitious students at a hospital training school and is primarily a story of the stern discipline and laborious physical and mental toil they endure in order to become nurses and join the White Parade. It is told mainly through the character of June Arden, who finds romance with Ronald Hall III along the way, with side stories of the other girls who find failure, success, laughter, and tears along the way.” By the way, IMDB’s description includes the following sentence which really isn’t about the plot: “The forerunner of umpteen dozens of TV series over the past 40 years.” Well, someone or something has to be the starting point, doesn’t it?

The film is based upon a novel by Rian James, who co-wrote the screenplay with Jesse Lasky Jr., Sonya Levien, and Ernest Pascal. (Only James and Lasky received credit, though. Such are the vagaries of Hollywood.) The film is dedicated to Florence Nightingale, arguably the most famous nurse in history, a woman who inspired many people to join the profession of nursing to help others. Apparently, she’s referenced many times during the film itself.

The main character of June Arden is played by Loretta Young. June is an aspiring nurse at the Mitchell-Reed School for Nurses, and the film follows her and several of her classmates as they undergo the rigorous preparation they need to begin their practical training at a hospital. John Boles III plays June’s love interest, Ronald Hall III, a wealthy polo player. I guess at one point you could have a job as a polo player, and it was quite lucrative. I suspect that Boles’ character is not as charming throughout the film as might be initially assumed. Rich polo players with a Roman numeral at the end of their names don’t tend to be pillars of compassion and understanding in the movies.

Much of the plot involves the process of becoming a nurse, but there’s enough interaction between the different nursing students to suggest that they are jealous and underhanded and perhaps prone to being unable to keep their work and personal lives separate. There’s also a conflict between June and Ronald over the amount of time she’s spending at her job, but wasn’t that a likely source of disagreement at a time when many women were not expected and certainly not encouraged to have careers of their own? And who couldn’t see this coming from Rich Polo Player III?

Interesting bit of Oscar trivia: Young also starred in The House of Rothschild the same year as The White Parade, and both films were nominated for Best Picture. That is not a particularly common occurrence for the Academy Awards. Young would win an Oscar for Best Actress of 1947 and was one of the most reliable and well-like stars of her era.

Rumor has it the print at UCLA is in pretty bad condition, most likely a result of having just one option for preservation. Maybe the film can be and will be restored some day, especially since it will be in the public domain within the next few years.

By the way, I’m married to a nurse, and he’s never heard his occupation called “the white parade.” Neither has anyone else in nursing that I’ve ever met. Was this perhaps a nickname that was in favor for a very short period time? Or maybe it was a regional designation that never gained widespread favor? Or maybe James just made it up for his novel?

Oscar Nominations: Best Picture and Best Sound Recording

Best Picture of 1939

 

Oscar Winner: Gone With the Wind

Other Nominees: Dark Victory, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Love Affair, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Ninotchka, Of Mice and Men, Stagecoach, The Wizard of Oz, and Wuthering Heights

My Choice: The year 1939 is often referred to as the “greatest year in Hollywood” because of the astonishing number of quality films that were released that year. It’s tough to argue with the list of nominees for Best Picture even if it fails to include some other classics from that same year. However, it’s also tough to argue with the Academy’s choice of Best Picture. I’ve already discussed the complications that come with the film Gone With the Wind, but when you consider the sheer scale of filmmaking involved and you watch the iconic performances by everyone in the cast and you think of the lasting impact that it has had (good and bad, I suppose), it’s the most obvious and deserving choice.

If I’m allowed to pick a runner-up, it would be The Wizard of Oz, perhaps the second most influential film from that year, and it too represents filmmaking on a grand scale and features great performances from everyone in the cast. Why wouldn’t I be allowed to pick a runner-up? It’s my blog, after all.

Of Mice and Men (1939)

 

Of Mice and Men is a pretty bleak film set in Depression-era California. It’s based upon the novel by John Steinbeck, and if you’re expecting a happy experience, you’ve clearly never read one of Steinbeck’s books from that era. Two migrant workers keep moving from one job to another, and it’s a tough existence, particularly since one of them suffered a brain injury as a child and cannot fully comprehend most of what people say to him. However, he’s astonishingly strong and a hard worker who listens to and does whatever his friend tells him to do.

The two friends are George (played by Burgess Meredith) and Lennie (Lon Chaney Jr.), and they’ve been together for years. I think I heard George say they were cousins at one point early in the film, but that still doesn’t stop the questioning from everyone about why the two of them are together. It’s pretty simple, though. Lennie needs someone to keep him from using his brute strength to harm someone or something. At the start of the film, the two of them are escaping from Weed because Lennie did some act that upset the townspeople. We’re never told exactly what happened, but we start to imagine what it could be.

We quickly get introduced to a host of characters that will play important parts in the narrative. Curley and his new wife, for example, will keep getting involved in George and Lennie’s lives. Curley (Bob Steele) is the son of the owner of the barley farm the two men show up at. Curley is jealous of any attention his wife gets, and he’s quite hot-tempered, seemingly always up for a fight. His wife (Betty Field, fascinating in a small role) is bored and, to be fair, a bit of a tramp. She wants to see other people, to get out of the house from time to time, but Curley keeps leaving her alone to hang out in the nearby town with other men and, presumably, other women. Make of that sentence what you will.

Charles Bickford plays Slim, the most experienced and knowledgeable hand on the farm and someone who takes little guff from Curley. Roman Bohnen plays Candy, a farm worker who lost his hand in an accident and hangs around doing little odd jobs. He has an older dog that the other workers object to because it’s gotten weak and rather smelly. One of the first terrible incidents in the film is when several of the men convince Candy to let them kill the old dog and he would get a new puppy from Slim (like Curley’s wife has done). You can see from Bohnen’s face just how much it breaks Candy’s heart to let them kill his dog. It’s a tough moment in the film, one that will resonate all the way through until the ending.

Georgy and Lennie have a plan to earn enough money to buy a farm, a place where they can escape the constant difficulty of being someone else’s worker. Lennie will get to raise some rabbits, and he never stops talking about the rabbits. He really, really gets excited about them. That’s how Candy finds out about the farm and asks if he can join them. He has a lot of money, probably from being paid off after losing his hand on the job. Even Crooks, an African American farmhand who isn’t allowed to sleep in the bunkhouse with the rest of the men, asks to join them on the farm. It’s clearly meant as a representation of the American Dream, and it’s interesting to see that the downtrodden, the disabled, and the marginalized are the ones most invested in trying to escape their current situation and achieve that dream.

A series of misunderstandings leads Curley to attack Lennie, and the larger man breaks Curley’s hand even though he was just trying to stop the temperamental Curley from continuing to hit him. Lennie just cannot control himself; he doesn’t understand how strong he is and how dangerous he is as a consequence. Chaney was dismissed as a character actor and later as a horror film actor, but he’s very effective here. He is more expert at conveying someone with the lingering effects of a brain injury that a lot of other actors could muster.

The acting overall is particularly first rate. Several of the cast members came from the original Broadway production of the play adapted from Steinbeck’s novel, including Leigh Whipper who played Crooks and then went on to have a long career in Hollywood. Bohnen was also a stage actor, but he embodies Candy in a very naturalistic way here. Meredith had already performed in a few films, and Chaney had more than fifty film credits by the time he was cast as Lennie. Field was starring in just her second film here, but she brings a fitting sense of world-weariness to the role. She makes quite an impression in the few key scenes she has in the film.

It’s a sequence between Chaney and Field that serves as the climactic moment of the film. Curley has kicked his wife out of the house, so she goes to the barn to get the puppy that Slim gave her. She discovers Lennie there, sad because he’s accidentally killed his puppy by petting it too hard. Field makes the most of this scene, giving quite the monologue about how she wound up with Curley and how she’s going to Hollywood to be discovered. Lennie, of course, doesn’t follow most of this. He just keeps repeating the same lines, which prompts the rather low-class, rough woman to call him “goofy.”

Lennie talks about how much he likes soft things, perhaps the fur of the puppy or the fur of a rabbit, as examples. She talks about how soft her hair is and asks him to touch it to feel for himself. He hurts her because he doesn’t realize how strong he is and winds up killing her by accident. It’s a tragic moment in the film because we realize rather quickly that Lennie and George will have to leave again and keep looking for a new place.

When George and Candy discover the body, it doesn’t take long for the rest of the men on the farm to show up and figure out that Lennie is to blame. They form a search party, and it’s a race to see who can find Lennie first. This final sequence really allows Meredith to shine. He demonstrates the heaviness of the burden he’s been carrying trying to look out for Lennie all these years. It’s quite exhausting, so when he reaches a fatal decision that harkens back to an earlier scene in the film, the audience might be horrified, of course, but they will fully comprehend why he takes the action that he does. Meredith had a long and distinguished career in film, and this early role demonstrates how suited he was to the medium.

I don’t always talk about musical scores for dramatic films because, to a degree, they’re meant to serve as background music. However, Of Mice and Men features a marvelous original score by the great American composer Aaron Copland. This was only three years before he completed “Fanfare for the Common Man” and just five years before “Appalachian Spring,” two of his masterpieces. It’s tough to watch the film and not pay careful attention to the music that underscores the dramatic tension.

Oscar Nominations: Outstanding Production, Best Sound Recording, Best Scoring, and Best Original Score 

Wuthering Heights (1939)

 

Wuthering Heights is one of the greatest love stories in fiction even though it ends tragically for the lovers. (No, I won’t apologize for spoiling the ending of a novel that’s been around for almost two hundred years now.) This film adaptation of Emily Bronte’s novel features less than half of the full plot of the novel, but that allows it to focus more on the central romance, and that’s probably the reason that so many readers, particularly English majors, still love the book.

The film begins and ends with the arrival at the estate called Wuthering Heights of a stranger named Lockwood. He’s been caught in a snow storm and seeks refuge at the home, but the owner, Heathcliff, is less than hospitable. When Lockwood sees and hears what appears to be the figure of a woman in the snow, Heathcliff runs outside into the storm, leaving the housekeeper, Ellen (the great Flora Robson), to share with Lockwood the details of the love between Cathy and Heathcliff. What follows for much of the film is a flashback narrative told by Ellen. A small complaint here, and perhaps it was just the print that I watched, but Robson’s voiceover sounded like it had been recorded in a well.

Heathcliff comes to Wuthering Heights as an orphaned young boy from Liverpool. Cathy’s father takes him in, and Cathy and Heathcliff become friends as children. Hindley, Cathy’s brother, is a different matter, though, and he never accepts Heathcliff as belonging to the family or the home. Heathcliff and Cathy fantasize about having a future together that is more fairy tale than realistic, but when Cathy and Hindley’s father dies, Hindley takes over control of the home and becomes a drunk. He also becomes even more dismissive of Heathcliff, who has been forced to live in the stables with the horses.

As adults, Cathy and Heathcliff are played by Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier, certainly one of the most attractive couples to appear on film. The two young lovers have been meeting in secret atop Penistone Crags overlooking the Yorkshire moors. It’s there that they profess their feelings for each other and make plans to be together. Yes, the class distinctions and Heathcliff’s unknown origin will present difficulties, but they seem unwilling to consider that they might ever be separated.

The two of them sneak into a neighboring home to watch a party from outside, but two dogs attack them, leaving Cathy’s leg wounded. The young man of the house, Edgar Linton (played by a young David Niven), takes charge of her recovery but demands that Heathcliff leave. Cathy stays at the Linton estate for months healing and gets caught up in the word of rich people. Edgar falls in love with her and proposes to her. After all, Heathcliff (who is frequently dismissed as being a gypsy) hasn’t been around, Edgar is handsome and she is beautiful, and why shouldn’t they be together? Who has ever heard of a romantic storyline that didn’t involve at least three people?

Cathy now wants fine things and confesses to Ellen that she’s planning to marry Edgar. Heathcliff overhears their conversation and gets upset when he thinks she no longer loves him. I mean, she does say that it would be degrading for her to marry him, and this is not long after she’s criticized him for having dirty hands, which is probably pretty common for stable boys, to be honest. Those are some rather unkind things to say about someone you love. Of course, he doesn’t hear the entire discussion and misses the part when Cathy says that she realizes that they are meant to be together. He rides away, and she runs after him in a storm.

Once again, Cathy takes months to recover. They had very delicate constitutions in those days, and a good soaking from a rain would make them ill for a long time, I suppose. After she recovers, she marries Edgar and moves into his home. She and his sister, Isabella (Geraldine Fitzgerald) become friends, and everyone seems happy. You know where this is headed, right? Yes, Heathcliff returns after being away for a long time, and he’s now a gentleman. You can tell by the change in his clothes. He’s also acquired enough money to pay off Hindley’s gambling debts and liquor bills, making him the owner of Wuthering Heights.

His success shocks everyone, naturally, but Cathy claims to be happily married. It’s Isabella who finds herself attracted to Heathcliff. Edgar vows to prevent them from seeing each other, but everyone knows how that’s going to turn out. Heathcliff has become especially cruel now that he has money. He lets Hindley live at Wuthering Heights, but he regularly demoralizes the man and reminds him constantly of his cowardice. He also plans to make Cathy suffer by marrying Isabella.

You could see why someone young and perhaps naïve like Isabella could find Heathcliff appealing. He’s handsome and has a lot of money. He doesn’t seem to suffer fools easily. (Plus, he’s played by Olivier when he was perhaps his most handsome.) I have always suspected, though, that she is more aware of what’s going on than most viewers or readers think. Look at the scene where Isabella and Cathy fight over Heathcliff. Isabella clearly knows that Cathy is still in love with him, and he’s unable to look at anyone but Cathy. It’s only after living in the miserable home that is Wuthering Heights that Isabella herself starts to regret her decision.

Cathy then falls ill to one of those mysterious ailments that no one in the movie can name, perhaps for fear that it will be catching. It might just be love sickness or heartbrokenness, but as Ellen puts it, she’s willing herself to die. I guess if she cannot be happy with Heathcliff, she’d rather just perish. Heathcliff finds out that she’s ill and shows up in her bedroom to, basically, tell her off for leaving him, not just now but all those years ago when she chose Edgar, a pretty rough way to say goodbye to someone you love, certainly. She asks for forgiveness, tells him that she’s always loved him, and asks him to take her to her window so that she can see the moors again.

She vows that she’ll wait for him at the crags after she dies, and he prays that she will haunt him until his own death. That brings us back to the frame story that began the film. The doctor, played by the reliable Donald Crisp, shows up and says that he thought he saw Heathcliff and a woman walking together on the moors. When he climbed to Penistone Crags, he only found Heathcliff’s dead body in the snow. The film then provides a fantastical image of their “ghosts” (for lack of a better word) walking away from the camera.

It’s an emotional story, true, and you can see why it still resonates after so many years. I could point out that it seems from this version that Heathcliff was more in love and devoted than Cathy, but that might draw the ire of the Cathy-lovers out there. I will say that musical score by Alfred Newman is so evocative and lush, and the rather dark cinematography by Gregg Toland certainly fits the overall tone of the film. Olivier received his first of twelve Oscar nominations for this film, and Fitzgerald was also nominated for Best Supporting Actress. Oberon was overlooked for her performance, but it was a very tough year for Best Actress.

I’d like to single out one performer who didn’t get any Oscar attention. Robson is marvelous as Ellen. Watch her face during that pivotal scene where Heathcliff overhears the wrong part of a conversation about Cathy’s impeding marriage to Edgar. Look at how emotional she gets when she has to tell Isabella and Heathcliff that Cathy is dying. Robson takes a small role as a housekeeper and turns it into a pivotal one to the plot without the kinds of overacting that normally gets attention in small roles.

Oscar Win: Best Black-and-White Cinematography

Other Oscar Nominations: Outstanding Production, Best Actor (Laurence Olivier), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Geraldine Fitzgerald), Best Director (William Wyler), Best Screenplay, Best Art Direction, and Best Original Score

Best Picture of 1929-30

The Winner: All Quiet on the Western Front

Other Nominees: The Big House, Disraeli, The Divorcee, The Love Parade

My Choice: All Quiet on the Western Front remains one of the most powerful war films ever made. None of the rest of the nominees rise to its level of greatness. The only one that comes close is The Big House, so that would be my second choice. 

The Love Parade (1929-30)

 

The Love Parade is a charming musical presentation of the consequences of a reversal of gender roles. It seems to ask, what if men were the powerless ones in relationships? Until the ending, it makes some good points about what might happen if partners were truly equals rather than having an imbalance in importance or power or authority. The ending cheats the audience a bit because it seems so retrograde in its implications, but until that point, we’re given some opportunities for moments of reflection.

Maurice Chevalier plays Count Alfred Renard, a military attaché to the ambassador to France from the country of Sylvania (no relation to the television set, apparently). While in Paris, he’s had numerous affairs, including one with the ambassador’s wife. He’s sent back to his home country to face the queen for punishment. By the way, even his servant (played by the delightful Lupino Lane) and the dog had flings with numerous partners. All of this is related through the song “Paris, Stay the Same,” suggesting that the French city is perhaps more open-minded than Sylvania. Everyone, save the ambassador, seems to have had a good time.

Jeanette McDonald, in her first major film role, plays Queen Louise of Sylvania, and she gets a nude bathing scene that’s quite shocking considering the image of most of her late films. She comes across as so prim and proper in her career that it’s a surprise to see her starting this film with such a sequence. Everyone in the government and, really, in the country wants her to marry someone, but she’s not interested in any of the options that are presented to her. When Renard shows up, she gets intrigued by reading the report about his escapades. It must be pretty racy stuff, after all.

She must punish him, of course, but cannot think of a suitable way to do so. He vetoes her plan to make him grow a beard, certainly an odd way to show your displeasure with someone. When he suggests instead that he be forced to remain at her side, she seems quite happy even though she wonders aloud if that’s truly a punishment. The song “Anything to Please the Queen” (which sounds like the title of a great anthem for a drag performer) accompanies this sequence, and it’s a rather charming romantic number.

Everyone in the queendom, it seems, watches the Queen and the Count’s first dinner together. In fact, this is the most voyeuristic country in history. Almost everyone seems to be either watching the two through the windows or gossiping about what they’ve seen or heard from others. The Queen and the Count do seem to have immediate chemistry, and why not? It is a romantic comedy musical after all, and it was the first sound film directed by Ernst Lubistch, who had such a wonderfully light style for these kinds of films.

They get married quickly, and the count becomes the prince consort. Unfortunately, that means he has no power because he’s not the king and most definitely not her equal in decision making. He realizes this when the wedding vows are all about her. He has to obey her, for example, no sharing of that aspect of marriage. The phrase “I now pronounce you wife and man” is a clear and clever reversal of how it is commonly phrased. The wedding night is continually interrupted by cannon fire, which is quite suggestive for a film so early in the sound era. He cannot stop the noise so that he can concentrate upon lovemaking, though, because he has no power or authority, and besides, the Queen has asked for it. I suppose even she appreciates a good metaphor.

Each day she gets to go out and do queenly tasks, like inspecting the grenadiers, and he only has activities like tennis and bridge. He even has to wait for her to eat breakfast, so he feels like he is not useful to anyone.  The song “Nobody’s Using It Now” suggests just how useless he feels, and exactly what “it” is makes for quite a naughty song. He tries to be helpful, even creating a budget for the country that would be self-supporting rather than depending upon a loan from other countries, but because he is the prince consort, it’s rejected. He tells her that he’s going back to Paris on the night she’s supposed to attend the opera because he serves no purpose in Sylvania. They fight because their appearance together has implications for the country’s success at raising money and for its reputation among other nations. He shows up after all, of course, because this is romance, and he gets a standing ovation from the audience. Why they applaud him so vigorously is a source of confusion. What exactly has he done to deserve such a response? Why is he so much more popular than the Queen? Does everyone really know what’s been going on in their private chambers?

When they return to the palace after the opera, he makes her beg him to stay. They discuss a suitable punishment for her, and what do you know? She has to stay by his side the way he stood by hers. This is the second Oscar nominee from this year that starts with an interesting premise about women’s equality but ends with the men resuming control over a relationship. It must have been very tough to be a feminist in this era.

There’s a cute subplot involving his loyal servant (Lane) and one of the queen’s maids (played by Lillian Roth). They have a comic number entitled “Let’s Be Common” that verges on slapstick or burlesque. It’s very physically demanding, and they are both more than able comic actors. That moment is perhaps only topped by “The Queen Is Always Right,” which involves numerous supporting cast members in a debate over the nation’s future, but Roth and Lane are the highlights of that number as well.

The filmmakers don’t translate the occasional use of French in the dialog. There’s even a joke about it. Chevalier asks someone if they know French, and when he replies no, Chevalier clearly says something quite derogatory. Later, when another person replies yes, Chevalier simply shrugs and says, that’s too bad.

Here’s a bit of Oscar trivia for you: The Love Parade was the first film to be nominated for six Academy Awards, but it lost all of them. As I’ve noted earlier, it was MacDonald’s first feature film in a leading role and Lubitsch’s first sound film. As slight an entertainment as this appears to be to a viewer nowadays, it certainly has a place in Oscar history.

Oscar Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director (Lubitsch), Best Actor (Chevalier), Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, and Best Sound Recording

The Divorcee (1929-30)

 

The Divorcee is an intriguing Pre-Code examination of double standards. A married couple break up not because the husband cheats on his wife, which he does first, but because she later cheats on him and he cannot accept her infidelity. The script makes a rather impassioned plea for fairness in the ways that the different genders are treated when it comes to these kinds of behaviors, but the story fails women, in particular, with its rather retrograde ending.

We first meet Jerry (Norma Shearer) and Ted (Chester Morris) with their group of wealthy friends at some sort of cabin retreat. They get engaged during this trip, but their friend Paul (Conrad Nagel) gets jealous because he’s in love with Jerry himself. He gets drunk and then has a horrible car accident that leaves another one of their friends, Dorothy (Helen Johnson), disfigured. Out of guilt, Paul marries Dorothy in her hospital room while intercutting scenes show us Jerry and Ted’s wedding. You might think that Jerry and Paul will later have an affair, but you’re already off base. That would be too simple.

On the day of their third anniversary, Jerry and Ted seem very happy together, but when their friends show up with a woman named Janice (Mary Doran), Ted gets very uncomfortable. He’s leaving for Chicago the same day for business, but Jerry quickly realizes that he’s upset because he was unfaithful with Janice. He tells Jerry all the usual lies: he was drunk, it wasn’t planned, it doesn’t mean anything, blah blah blah. She’s angry and disappointed with him, and he leaves for a week.

Ted does try to get in touch with her to apologize, but she manages to avoid or ignore his attempts. Their friend Don (Robert Montgomery) takes her home, and he’s a little bit drunk like Ted was with Janice. Don takes her to a club where she’s clearly thinking about what she’s going to do with Don later on. There’s a very determined look on her face. Initially, she’s tearful over her own fidelity, but she gets angry quickly when Don asks her not to tell Ted. How does she tell her husband? “I’ve balanced our accounts. That’s all.” That certainly seems like one of the coldest announcements possible, and he winds up angrier over her infidelity than she did over his own infidelity. It’s quite a double standard, and she points it out to him directly.

One of the wildest scenes follows. Ted shows up drunk at a friend’s wedding, demolishes the cake, and punches a man that he thinks might have been the one she slept with (he’s wrong, of course). He then goes home to pack so that he can leave her. Morris is particularly good in this sequence, and he’s especially strong when Jerry is pleading for forgiveness out of a sense of fairness. He cannot see that what she did is no worse (or better) than what he did, and she witheringly condemns his male pride.

After they divorce, Jerry dates a series of men in a brilliantly edited sequence that only shows pairs of hands (one male, one female) in the shots. The dialog establishes that she’s seeing men from a wide range of nationalities based upon the accents. She’s also acquiring quite a bit of jewelry, it appears. Her hair has gotten looser, curlier than before, suggesting the freedom that she now feels, and she claims to be having a good time even if she admits that none of these relationships are serious.

You remember the unfortunate Paul from earlier, yes? Well, Jerry and Paul meet on a train, and he tells her that he still loves her. She breaks down at his admission and admits that she’s very tired of all these so-called good times. His marriage to Dorothy has been an unhappy one for them both, and he wants to divorce his wife and marry Jerry. He’s got a new job in Japan, so it could be a fresh beginning for them both. She accepts his proposal only to be confronted by Dorothy, who comes to see Jerry and finds Paul there. She tells Paul that she wants to stay married because he’s all she has at this point. This scene is a bit tough to watch because the actress playing Dorothy is wearing a very dark veil to cover her disfigured face. How could she even tell who she’s talking to? Can she see through all that black fabric?

Jerry decides that she wants to reunite with Ted. Remember what I said about the movie’s ending unraveling its premise that women might have as much right to have an affair as men do? Of course, everyone who does so must still be punished, and this was before the Production Code went into effect. She moves to London for a new job and keeps going out in Paris with the hopes of finding Ted. They do meet again, and the film provides its happy Hollywood ending for two people who have, I suppose, both realized that they’ve each done the other wrong. It still seems rather unrealistic given all that’s happened.

Shearer was chosen as the Best Actress for her performance, it’s quite easy to see why. She does get to show a wide range of emotional responses, and her face is very expressive about what’s happening to her. She doesn’t need dialog all the time; she can convey emotions very directly. I know that the Academy had not yet started awarding Best Supporting Actress yet, but if they had, I’d fully expect that Zelda Sears as Hannah, the maid who remains loyal to Jerry through the film, would have been nominated. She’s great comic relief and knows how to deliver her lines with a lot of zing. When she tells Jerry at one point that she has a date with the butcher, Jerry asks if he has “honorable intentions.” Hannah’s reply: “I’m afraid they are. He just wants to keep a good customer.” It’s nice to have these moments of fun.

Oscar Win: Best Actress (Norma Shearer)

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director (Robert Z. Leonard), and Best Writing