A Lady to Love

For one thing, this film seems to be an anachronism itself. A film about a grape grower in the Napa valley in the middle of Prohibition, and not one mention about Prohibition in the film, with wine bottles flowing left and right. Edward G. Robinson plays Tony, the grape grower in question. He is a middle aged man and has decided to go to San Francisco to find a young wife. The priest tells him nothing good ever came from an older man marrying a younger wife, but Tony forges ahead. He finds Lena (Vilma Banky) working in a San Fran restaurant, and decides she is the one with no more conversation between them than "Here's your check".

Back home, Tony has his field hand, Buck (Robert Ames), help him write a romantic letter proposing, but then Buck says it will never work without a photo. They both go into town and get their pictures taken, but Tony does not like his photo at all. He looks at his photo, he looks at the photo of handsome Buck, and makes the bad decision of mailing Buck's photo to Lena along with his letter. Lena is apparently from Switzerland - she has a picture of a Swiss farm on her night table, and responds in the affirmative.

Buck doesn't know what Tony did with his photo, Lena is for sure in the dark, and Tony is wondering how to break the news when his bride arrives. Complications ensue. Now this entire film is based on the premise that Tony is older, Lena is younger, and so is Buck. But that is not exactly true. Vilma Banky, playing Lena, is actually only four years younger than Edward G. Robinson, who is playing Tony. And Robert Ames, who is playing Buck, is actually five years older than Robinson!

Note that they try to keep Vilma from talking as much as possible, and she is pretty good at pantomiming around the part, although her thick Austrian accent actually works for her here. Also note the habit of Italian Americans at that time of keeping portraits of the heads of both America and the home country proudly displayed. They were very proud of both countries. However, in 1930, it is the unfortunate fact that Herbert Hoover is president of the United States and Benito Mussolini is in charge of Italy. You'll miss their portraits sitting side by side in Tony's living room it if you don't look around on the set!

Recommend as one of the better early talkies with good direction by Victor Sjöström. I believe this was the last film he directed in America, disheartened by the American studio system ever since he had to tack on a feel good ending to 1928's "The Wind".

I knew this story first from the musical version, THE MOST HAPPY FELLER, with its great Frank Loesser score. Later, I saw the straight remake, THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WANTED, with Carole Lombard's best straight dramatic role. This version, directed by Victor Sjostrom, is very primitive. Oh, Vilma Banky, despite the claims that her sound acting was always bad, is quite good, although she's best in the sequences in which she says nothing or spends her time mumbling her lines; Edward G. Robinson's portrayal is so stereotypical that it seems almost comical for most of the movie, until the finale, when he plays it big and is very affecting; still, I thought it would have been better played by Henry Armetta -- until I realized that Armetta was still playing bit roles under a different name at this point.

It's Robert Ames as Buck, the casual trouble-maker in this triangle, who is infuriating in this movie. He doesn't start any of the trouble. He doesn't care. He wanders in and out, and Ames plays him as a completely uninvolved drifter, which is completely appropriate, so why does everyone invest so much in him? Yes, he's good-looking in an unkempt way, but there's nothing noteworthy about him. We're supposed to imagine that Miss Banky has talked herself into marrying the man in the photograph, and he's simply taking advantage of the situation, but he's played as not a heel for sleeping with her, nor a good guy for leaving.

So what are we left with? A bit of a curiosity, with the MGM staff still learning how to handle the sound equipment and a fine final two or three minutes from Robinson. It's not enough to make it a good movie, but since it's Edward G. Robinson, it's worth looking at once.

Starring vilma banky, edward robinson, and robert ames. Early role for robinson, also an early talkie for him. Tony places an ad for a bride, but uses a photo of brother buck instead of himself. When lena and tony meet, she is angry, but agrees to marry anyway. Of course, tony has been injured in a car accident, so it won't be much of a honeymoon celebration. And lena ends up falling for the guy in the photo. Can all this be ironed out? This was made way before the film code was being enforced, so they were able to speak about things pretty openly. It's all okay. The fake accents keep changing. Except for lena's... she was genuinely struggling with the english. Some over-acting, when tony reacts to getting a bath, but robinson was just starting his acting career. A funny moment near the end, when buck says "i don't let no lady give me the gate like you're trying to do, and get away with it, see?" robinson must have picked that up here, since he said "see" so often in his gangster movies over the next fifteen years. Directed by victor sjöström. Based on the play by sidney howard. Ames had married and divorced four times by the time he was forty. Sadly, he died young at 42, just a year after this film was released! Banky was a huge silent film star, and had made two films with valentino. Apparently she didn't speak much english, so she retired soon after the talkies appeared. Anderson lawler and henry armetta both died in their fifties. Sidney howard, the author, died even younger at 48, apparently run over by his own tractor. Howard posthumously won his oscar for the screenplay "gone with the wind".

Many silent movie stars from overseas who worked in Hollywood saw their marketability go down when talkies came upon the scene. A number of them either knew little English or spoke with heavy accents. In the silent era, with inter titles, they made huge bucks because it didn't matter if they knew the language.

There's a debate whether her Hungarian accent spelled doom for one of film's more popular actresses, or whether she just became uninterested in acting. But Hungarian born and raised Vilma Banky's only surviving talkie and her last Hollywood movie was February 1930's "A Lady To Love." Hand selected by Rudolph Valentino to play opposite in two of his most successful movies, 1925 "The Eagle" and 1926 "The Son of the Sheik," Banky was a highly sought after actress in Hollywood. Billed as "The Hungarian Rhapsody," she was Samuel Goldwyn's biggest star attraction, making more money for him than any of his other actors. In an arranged studio marriage with actor Rod La Rocque in the summer of 1927, Goldwyn paid for one of the most extravagant receptions Hollywood had ever witnessed. The marriage proved to be one of the longest marriages between two screen stars, lasting almost 50 years until La Rocque's death in 1969.

Banky's acting resume was long and deep. But when she arrived in Hollywood in 1925 she knew absolutely not one word of English. Her first talkie, the now lost 1929 'This Is Heaven,' proved to be a nightmare for her. Her next movie, "A Lady To Love," under the direction of Swedish director Victor Sjostrom, Banky had an easier time, but she still spoke with a heavy accent. The actress decided to go to Germany to appear in two additional films, then retired from movies, something she said she was going to do when she married La Rocque.

Director Sjostrom felt the same way as Banky did about talkies. He was one of the highest paid Hollywood directors in the mid-to-late 1920s for MGM. But he felt uncomfortable with the new audio technology and left MGM for Europe after the completion of "A Lady To Love" to direct just four more movies before returning solely to acting.

"A Lady To Love," based on Sidney Howard's 1924 Pulitzer Prize winner "They Knew What They Wanted," stars Edward G. Robinson as Tony, a large estate winery owner in Napa Valley who gets Lena (Banky) to marry him sight unseen by passing a photo of his younger brother Buck (Robert Ames) as himself. Even though she's attracted to Buck, she ends up marrying Tony. Then things get really sticky when Buck returns after a long absence.

Banky and La Rocque, after he retired from movies in the 1940s, made a nice living selling real estate in the area. She lived to be 90, outliving her husband. But her death wasn't reported for over a year. With no children, Banky was upset no one had paid her a visit during her final years. She dictated to her lawyer not to make public her death when it happened. With 24 movies under her belt, only eight exist today. And "A Lady To Love" happens to be one of them.

A beautiful story of love, that reminded me of Greta Garbo's "Anna Christie". I loved Vilma Bankee's voice and accent. I felt that the film was charming in it's "innocence" and simplicity, while dealing with a very complex issue. I hope that I may someday see it again.