A BILL OF DIVORCEMENT (1932)

Clemence Dane’s arthritic play, trimmed & kept on its feet by director George Cukor, is still worth a look for Katharine Hepburn in her all but fully-formed debut & for John Barrymore’s star turn, remarkable right from his glamorously delayed third-reel entrance. At 50, he’s a handsome, shell-shocked WWI vet, just fled from the mental asylum he’s been at the last 15 years. Recovered . . . or about to relapse? Unexpectedly showing at the family manse, he unwittingly upsets all carts, unaware that ex-wife Billie Burke has finalized a divorce and plans to re-marry; meeting newly engaged daughter Hepburn for the first time. Worse, his fragile mental health may have been induced by shell-shock, but it stems from a family history of bad blood & inherited insanity . . . guess who’s likely to get it next. Yikes! Somehow, under Cukor’s smooth handling, they pull off this drawing-room claptrap for an act and a half, but come the third, all devolves into one long slog of selfless martyrdom punctuated by arias of renunciation for each major player. A bit much even when the play was new in the ‘20s. Yet what an entrance for Kate, sweeping down a staircase, looking & sounding like nothing ere seen on film. She hasn’t the range for her big renunciation scene with mild-mannered fiancé David Manners (and wouldn’t till her Mary Tyrone in LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT/’62), but her presence is immediately apparent. And Barrymore is continuously fascinating. Slipping easily between calm naturalism and plunges into quick-spent flurries of barnstorming matinee idol madness. Barrymore finally taking film acting with the seriousness of his stage work. As if working with Greta Garbo in GRAND HOTEL and Hepburn here had him at last seizing on possibilities in the medium. (Or just shamed him into improving his game.) And for the next two years, until his alcoholic breakdown at the end of 1934, putting up a brief, precious master-class in film acting.*

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Four classics in eight films: TOPAZE; DINNER AT EIGHT; COUNSELLOR AT LAW; TWENTIETH CENTURY. (And three of the remaining four not far behind.)

DOUBLE-BILL: A John Farrow remake from 1940, w/ Maureen O’Hara & Adolphe Menjou (not seen here), rarely shows.