Pleasure

Conway Tearle is a successful novelist, estranged from wife Carmel Meyers. Paul Page, Tearle's brother, is an unsuccessful painter who doesn't work hard enough. Tearle subsidizes him. When he finds a perfect model in Frances Dade, he falls in love with her. He doesn't know she is carrying on an affair with Tearle, whom she does not know is married.

Tearle seems unable to speak a line without intoning it, while Page seems callow. In all probability, there are performance choices, but it causes me to dislike both of them. My sympathy is reserved for Miss Myers, who has a rare well-written talkie role, and Miss Dade, who is an elegant creature, best remembered these days, for her performance as Lucy in DRACULA. Hers was a short career, fifteen screen appearances from 1928 through 1933, then a marriage to a wealthy man. She died in 1968 and the age of 57.

Somewhere in the writing, this movie was intended as a serious commentary on open marriage. It seems to have lost its way, and become tawdry as a result. Keep an eye out for Roscoe Karns, Lina Basquette, and George Hayes, far from his 'Gabby' persona.