ROCKABYE (1932)

After a breakthru earlier this year with Constance Bennett & producer/R.K.O. head-of-production David O. Selznick on WHAT PRICE HOLLYWOOD? (an embryonic version of A STAR IS BORN*), director George Cukor was just the man to take over this troubled production, reshooting all of leading man Phillips Holmes’ scenes with Joel McCrea stepping in.  (Original director George Fitzmaurice retains production credit.)  The joins show in a few awkward edits, but the finished film now a respectable weepie, a glammed up, modernized CAMILLE with Bennett getting the big renunciation act sending her lover off to protect family values.  Playing a gossip-worthy B’way star, Constance is forced to give up her adopted girl after testifying in court on her affair with former fiancé Walter Pidgeon.  Now back in town after Paul Lukas, her lovestruck manager, sent her off to recover in Europe, she’s found a new play and a new love in hunky playwright Joel McCrea, married but suing for divorce.  Enter Mrs. McCrea, not the wife, but the mother, who convinces Connie to ‘do the right thing’ since the younger Mrs. McCrea (the wife) is having a baby.  In CAMILLE, it’s the father who does this pleading, and a sister rather that a wife who needs the sacrifice, but the same noble template.  They even toss in a big party to make the renunciation scene a spectacle.  Fortunately, no TB; but a reasonably happy ending.  No great find, but not without interest.  Between decor, clothes and Bennett, definitely worth a look.

CONTEST: *Bennett’s pre-STAR IS BORN pic, WHAT PRICE HOLLYWOOD?/’32, exceptional in its own way, has the romantic lead split in two: doomed alcoholic/Hollywood-phobic businessman.  Cukor would go on to make the Judy Garland/James Mason musical version in 1954 as well as a real, period version of CAMILLE with Garbo in ‘37.  And there's yet another future Cukor film referenced here.  Name it to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of a streamable film of your choice.

DOUBLE-BILL: Cukor’s next, his last with Bennett, adapted from Somerset Maugham’s OUR BETTERS, doesn’t come off.  But the Maugham play, very Oscar Wilde-like, not without interest.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Our poster is no exaggeration. Constance Bennett really looked like that in 1932.  No wonder sister Joan switched from blonde to brunette to avoid competition.