La dame à scandale

I watched this film, Lady of Scandal, because I had never seen Ruth Chatterton in a film, and I'm very glad I saw it. There was very witty dialogue, some funny scenes, and some tender moments peppered throughout this movie, which was based on a play. The beginning was a riot, as Chatterton, while performing on stage, dances herself over to the wings and hands her fiancée a letter from his family. "Your family is horrid!" she exclaims while doing her high kicks. The dialogue between Chatterton's prospective parents-in-law is especially funny.

It's fascinating to see Basil Rathbone in his pre-Sherlock Holmes days. He was Margaret Mitchell's idea of Rhett Butler, she told a reporter, and it's perhaps a little bit easier to see why in these early films. But it's obvious that when Mitchell wrote her famous book, she envisioned her characters somewhat differently and from another perspective. Rathbone could have been a dashing southern gentleman but the ruggedness and sexiness would have been lost.

Chatterton was a charming performer with a wide range, as exhibited in this film. She could do the theatrical diva, as well as comedy and pathos. I look forward to seeing more of her films.

Sluggish is the word for MGM's adaptation of Frederick Lonsdale's "The High Road." Long pauses were not uncommon in early talking features but they seem to go on forever in this one. Stuffy people in huge rooms who pause a very long time between pompous utterances. Also of note is the very uneven, often shoddy sound recording. Although MGM was known to be the most well-financed studio in Hollywood, the audio is surprisingly tacky. The actors' voices sound like they are being piped in through a poor telephone line. At times actors' footsteps can be heard clicking across the floor and at other times they're dead silent. Of minor interest, a few camera setups present the action in both the fore- and background of the frame.

Standard English drawing room-types populate the cast, best represented by Frederick Kerr (a cross between Guy Kibbee and Winston Churchill in his final decline and who has some fun moments after trying out a cocktail called "Gullet Washer"), Nance O'Neill as his monocled wife, and MacKenzie Ward as a dapper eccentric.

The leads are Basil Rathbone (who does well despite the technical obstacles to contend with), Ruth Chatterton (very mannered) and Ralph Forbes (cardboard through and through).

Some amusing barbs at the British upper crust and it's always nice to spend time with Ms. Chatterton but too much of this movie suffers from the unintended irony of its being as stiff and dull as the people it's satirizing.

British playwright Frederick Lonsdale had many of his drawing room comedies transferred to the screen, and this is one of his best. Ralph Forbes is in love with Ruth Chatterton, a British star actress, and forces the issue of marriage by announcing their engagement in the newspapers. He is the son of staid Lord Crayle (Herbert Bunston), who gathers the family together at his estate to try to determine what to do about it. They consider offering her a sum of £5000 to deny it when Forbes brings her to the meeting. Except for Basil Rathbone, the family is dead set against the marriage and think Chatterton too low in society. In a funny twist, her father, Robert Bolder, arrives to object to the marriage too. He thinks Chatterton is a genius at providing entertainment for the masses, and doesn't want her marrying beneath her station. He suggests they approve the engagement providing the marriage is delayed for six months, by which time Forbes should be totally bored with her. They agree and so does Forbes and Chatterton. She stays at the estate and brings about a transformation in the most reserved members. It was fun to watch Herbert Bunston do a solo modern dance to the tune of "Lulu Comes Home." And Frederick Kerr, who normally doesn't drink, gets drunk as he extols the virtues of the "gulley washers" Chatterton introduces him to. Meanwhile, Rathbone and Chatterton fall in love, but she is also aware he has been carrying on a long-term affair with a married Parisian woman, who he had said earlier he would marry if he could. He promises to give up the woman, but things change as they hear on the radio that the husband of that woman has died. Now Chatterton feels that woman will always be between them, but Rathbone is adamant about giving her up. Chatterton puts through a call to her in Paris and hands the phone to Rathbone, who has some difficulty going through with his plan. And Forbes has some ideas about his life, too.

Is this film ever a throwback. Hard to believe that back in those days in very class stratified Great Britain that the upper classes would get all in a snit over the idea of one of their titled people marrying an actress. Yet that is the subject of The Lady Of Scandal.

Who in this case happens to be Ruth Chatterton a rather celebrated actress on the London stage. Young Ralph Forbes proclaims that he's going to marry Chatterton so his family and extended family invite her to a weekend in the country to look her over. Once there however she's not happy with this snooty crowd. And her father Robert Bolder in an Alfred P. Doolittle type attitude doesn't want her marrying into them either.

Which is all right with cousin Basil Rathbone if she doesn't marry Forbes. He's got his own title to offer. He's also got a married mistress on the side.

The Lady Of Scandal had a respectable run in London's East End. But I rather think it didn't do well in the USA. This is one of those foreign works that Americans by and large just wouldn't get. Granted that people here wanted escapist entertainment during the Depression. But these people don't seem to have a clue.

Ruth Chatterton does fine in a most dated work that I doubt we'll ever see a remake of.