Wonderland Burlesque's Let's All Go To The Movies: She's A Lady! - Part I

Wonderland Burlesque's

Let's All Go To The Movies: 

She's A Lady!

Part I

Today, we begin another multi-part series of posts - She's A Lady!

And, yes, sometimes? It takes a lady.

Or so these films would have us believe.

They promise lots of drama, the occasional comedy or musical, and a little bit of dirt!

Let's take a walk down Hollywood Blvd. and shine a light on these magnificent classic films.

This way, if you please. But remember...

Ladies first!

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Gallant Lady

(1933)

In New York Sally Wyndham watches in distress as her aviator fiancée is killed in a plane crash. Pregnant and dazed, she wanders the streets and encounters Dan Pritchard, a doctor who served a two year prison sentence for committing what he considered a mercy killing. With his support, she gives up her child for adoption to a couple of his friends. Her quest for stability and happiness later takes her to Italy and Paris. Her life on solid ground, she comes to hope that the child's adoptive mother will return her son to her.

This American pre-Code drama was directed by Gregory La Cava and stars Ann Harding, Clive Brook and Otto Kruger. It was a production of Darryl F. Zanuck's independent company Twentieth Century Pictures.

This film was remade in 1938 as Always Goodbye with Barbara Stanwyck and Herbert Marshall.

Ann Harding was an American theatre, motion picture, radio, and television actress. A regular on Broadway and on tour in the 1920s, in the 1930s she was one of the first actresses to gain fame in the new medium of 'talking pictures'. Harding was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1931 for her work in Holiday.

Her first marriage was to Harry Bannister,  an actor. They married in 1926 and divorced in 1932 in Reno, Nevada. A New York Times article (May 8, 1932) about the divorce stated that the actress still loved her husband and only agreed to a divorce to help Bannister's stymied career. "The proceedings were among the most unusual in the history of Nevada's liberal divorce laws," the newspaper reported. "Only through dissolution of their marriage could he escape, they said, from being overshadowed by Miss Harding's rise to stardom." 

The divorce also resulted in what was described as "a bitter court fight... over custody of their daughter",  Jane Harding. According to an interview with Harding's biographer, Scott O'Brien, Jane Harding said, "I had a terrible childhood. I hated my nurse. I never saw mother. She was always busy." 

Werner Janssen, the conductor. Harding and Janssen married in 1937 and divorced in 1963, with Harding claiming that her husband had controlled her throughout their marriage, keeping her from her friends and isolating her from the world.

Among Harding's romances was the novelist and screenwriter Gene Fowler. Fowler wrote a number of Hollywood classics, including What Price Hollywood?

In the early 1960s, Harding began living with Grace Kaye, an adult companion, later known as Grace Kaye Harding. Ann Harding referred to Kaye as her 'daughter'.

Ann Harding

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Uncertain Lady

(1934)

AKA: The Behaviour of Mrs. Crane

Elliott Crane and his lover, Myra Spaulding, confront his wife, Doris and ask that she divorce Elliott. Doris agrees on condition they find her a replacement husband. During a weekend party at the Cranes' oceanside home, Edith Hayes and Cecily Prentiss, Doris' worldly friends, congratulate her on her scheme to keep her husband. Elliott and Myra bring two suitors to meet Doris, Carlos Almirante and Dr. Alexander Garrison. Carlos immediately tries to romance Doris, who is not interested in either man. Realizing that neither man will inspire Elliott's jealousy, Doris arranges for her friend, Bruce King, to come to the house to woo her. Bruce shows up and pretends to be a drunk who has lost his way. Myra and Elliott invite him in, and he becomes the life of the party. After Elliott finds Bruce and Doris alone together several times and sees them kissing, he becomes jealous, but so does Myra, who has discovered that Bruce is a multi-millionaire. Meanwhile, Cicely and Edith entertain Carlos and Alexander. Finally, all the guests leave, including Bruce, who takes Myra with him. Elliott apologizes to Doris for his affair, but she realizes that she has fallen in love with Bruce, and rushes off to stop him from sailing. Elliott follows and gets to the boat before Doris because her car has a flat tire. Elliott rushes to Bruce's cabin hoping to find Doris, but instead finds Myra, who has been abandoned by Bruce. The ship sets sail with Elliot and Myra aboard, while ashore, Bruce proposes to Doris!

This American comedy film directed by Karl Freund, written by Daniel Evans, Doris Anderson, Edward A. Curtiss, George O'Neil and Don Ryan, and stars Edward Everett Horton, Genevieve Tobin, Paul Cavanagh, Mary Nash, Renee Gadd and Donald Reed. It was released on April 3, 1934, by Universal Pictures

Based on the play The Behavior of Mrs. Crane by Harry Segall.

Genevieve Tobin

Actress Genevieve Tobin was first a stage actress. In Hollywood, she played supporting roles opposite such performers as Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, Cary Grant, Barbara Stanwyck, Claudette Colbert, Joan Blondell, and Kay Francis, but  on occasion she was cast in starring roles, in films such as Golden Harvest (1933) and Easy to Love (1934). She even played secretary Della Street to Warren William's Perry Mason in The Case of the Lucky Legs (1935). One of her performances was as the bored wife of a wealthy businessman in the drama The Petrified Forest (1936), starring Leslie Howard, Bette Davis, and Humphrey Bogart. She married director William Keighley in 1938, after which she made only a few more films. Her final film before retirement was No Time for Comedy (1940), with James Stewart and Rosalind Russell.

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Gambling Lady

(1934)

A businesslike syndicate runs all the gambling joints in town; least profitable is honest Mike Lee's. Under pressure to allow cheating, Mike walks out, leaving tough-minded daughter Lady Lee to earn a living the only way she knows. She soon becomes a success gambling among the rich, but, falling out with the syndicate, she considers the marriage proposal of blueblood Garry Madison. Can such a match work despite snobbery and old associations?

This American pre-Code romantic drama was directed by Archie Mayo, and stars Barbara Stanwyck, Joel McCrea and Pat O'Brien.

This is the first of six film collaborations between Barbara Stanwyck and Joel McCrae. Barbara Stanwyck and Joel McCrea became close friends on set and established a career-long working relationship. Stanwyck, however, once gave McCrea a dressing down and lesson in professionalism when he failed to show for a photoshoot  for production stills. McCrea had been told it was not necessary, but Stanwyck set him straight. She accused McCrea of taking his position as a Hollywood local and 'golden boy' for granted and recounted to him the hard work and hard living on the vaudeville and burlesque stage that she had experienced to get where she was. McCrea appreciated Stanwyck's frankness, admired her professionalism, and the two remained lifelong friends.

Barbara Stanwyck disliked working with director Archie Mayo. He was notorious for slapping, groping, and pinching the rear ends of his leading ladies. When he tried to pinch Stanwyck's bottom, she grabbed his arm and loudly told him to cut it out. He never touched her again.

Barbara Stanwyck

Stanwyck had such a long and distinguished career. She won the respect of those who worked with her for her tough-minded professionalism. Someone once said of her that she only lived for two things; and both of them were work! Among her romances? At the age of 45, she had a torrid four-year relationship with 22 year-old Robert Wagner! Good for her; a hardworking lady deserves a bit of pleasure.

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Outcast Lady

(1934)

Iris March agrees to marry a longtime friend of her brother Gerald, Boy Fenwick, when her true love, Napier Harpenden, spends four years away from her establishing a business in India. However, on their wedding night, a stranger reveals a secret about Boy's past to her that, when he learns that she has been informed of it, drives him to take his own life. When she refuses to disclose that secret to explain his suicide, suspicions about her character grow, and she is alienated from her brother and most of her acquaintances.

This American romantic drama was directed by Robert Z. Leonard and produced and distributed by Metro Goldwyn Mayer. The film stars Constance Bennett, Herbert Marshall and Mrs. Patrick Campbell. It's a sound version of Michael Arlen's 1924 novel The Green Hat, filmed in 1928 by MGM as A Woman of Affairs with Greta Garbo and John Gilbert.

The Hays office refused to sanction the movie under its original tile, The Green Hat. Michael Arlen's original novel had acquired a salacious reputation, so MGM reluctantly changed it. They were not even allowed to use it as a screen story credit. Outcast Lady leaves out subject matter from the original novel - heroin use and the supposed reason Boy kills himself on his wedding night (he had syphilis). The laundered script eventually tells audiences he went to prison for some heinous, but undisclosed crime, and that "his sins caught up with him", leaving the specifics to the imaginations of the listeners, who probably had a variety of other colorful ideas, especially in light of his relationship with Iris's brother, Gerald, who made no bones about worshiping him.

Initially, Norma Shearer was announced to star in the film with Dudley Murphy directing.

The movie was previewed by MGM as Iris March, but public indifference caused them to change it to Outcast Lady.

Although MGM had signed Mrs. Patrick Campbell to a contract, they were so unhappy with her work in her first film, Riptide (1934), that her screen time in Outcast Lady was abbreviated to little more than a bit, in one short sequence, despite her contractually receiving third billing.

Constance Bennett

Bennett married five times! The first, against her parents' wishes, when she was only sixteen, was annulled. For her second, she returned to the same judge who performed her first. In the end, she had five children. Her fifth marriage was to a military man and she spent a great deal of time entertaining and arranging entertainment for the US troops. For her work, she was honored with the title 'Brigadier General'. In 1965, she collapsed on the set of Madame X and died shortly after.

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The Laughing Lady

(1946)

A nobleman is sent to England by Robespierre to steal Marie Antoinette's former pearls from the Prince of Wales in order to save his mother from the guillotine.

Based on a play by Ingram D'Abbes, this British Technicolor musical drama was directed by Paul L. Stein and stars Anne Ziegler, Webster Booth and Francis L. Sullivan. 

Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth had appeared in other films before this one but usually as guest artists. This was the first film where they had starring roles.

Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth

Anne Ziegler was an English singer, known for her light operatic duets with her husband Webster Booth. The pair were known as the 'Sweethearts in Song' and were among the most famous and popular British musical acts of the 1940s.

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And that's all for now.

Tune in next time...

Same place, same channel.

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So Deep Is The Night - Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth