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".

Sidney Howard's 1924 play "They Knew What They Wanted" had already been brought to the silver screen in 1928 as the silent "The Secret Hour" (Paramount) which I have not seen and probably never will since I am averse to silent movies. Just two years later, it was given the talkie treatment by MGM as "A Lady to Love", originally entitled "Sunkissed".

As one would expect, everyone is very histrionic, especially Edward G. Robinson, but effectively so when one is accustomed to watching early talkies and knows what to expect. The three stars have good chemistry, no matter if they're all together or just in couples. The prolonged early scene between Vilma Banky and Leon Ames is quite amusing and well paced. Ames seems the most natural, but maybe that's because he's the only one without an accent. The character portrayed by the Austro-Hungarian Banky is Swedish, but was originally American and the writing reveals this with the numerous ain't-s and other colloquialisms which sound natural from Ames' mouth, but very artificial from hers. Just changing the character's nationality to suit the actress without revising her lines seems like a lazy fix and was somewhat irritating to me, but not enough to detract from my overall enjoyment of the film.

What can one say about Robinson as the Italian grapeg rower? This is probably his hammiest film performance, yet he is always watchable and entertaining. Seeing him fall down the stairs in a drunken frenzy or giggle like a squeamish schoolgirl when Banky is rubbing him down are particular highlights. I couldn't help but laugh at the prominently placed portrait of Mussolini on his wall considering that World War II was just nine years away at the time.

Merritt B. Gerstad's cinematography is very fluid (for an early talkie), beautiful and atmospheric, as it usually was in films lensed by him - see the talkie version "Seventh Heaven" from 1937. Apart from the creaky title music, the score is confined to source cues as was customary at the time. Max Steiner would soon set a new trend with his extensive (for its time, of course) score for "Symphony of Six Million" in 1932.

A German language version for foreign distribution was filmed in parallel on the same sets. This was not unusual in the pre-dubbing era of the early 30's - Dracula was filmed in both English and Spanish in 1931. Nevertheless, "Die Sehnsucht jeder Frau" (Every Woman's Passion), as it was retitled in German, was unusual in that it retained the English version's director Victor Seastrom (a Swede) as well as two of its stars - Banky (Austro-Hungarian) and Robinson (Romanian), while the American Ames was replaced by Joseph Schildkraut. I would personally love to see this version out of curiosity - who would have guessed Edward G. knew German? - but it seems to be lost.

The play was eventually filmed in English for the third time in 1940 under its original title, released by RKO and starring Charles Laughton and Carole Lombard. I have yet to see this version since I am also somewhat averse to both stars, but I may give it a chance one day since I moderately enjoyed their previous collaboration - Paramount's "White Woman" from 1933. None of those four film versions of the play has been officially released on DVD, let alone Blu Ray, but I hope this 1930 version gets released by the Warner Archive Collection since I would gladly make it part of my own.

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.

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".