The Laughing Lady (1929)
Ruth Chatterton and Clive Brook should be teamed forever.
True aristocrats of the talking tintypes, yet able to blow up a tremendous head of passionate steam when it is needed, this royal pair makes a sizzling, stinging thing of "The Laughing Lady," a play by the English Alfred Sutro.
The story is excellent talkie material, and the brilliant direction of Victor Schertzinger keeps affairs moving like the Twentieth Century Limited. But it is the superb work of the two trained and eager principals which makes "The Laughing Lady" a best picture in any league.
The regal Chatterton plays a young married woman, with a baby, whose husband divorces her on circumstantial evidence which blackens her character. From this point the story moves, with breakneck speed, toward her vamping, and then degrading, the brilliant attorney who handled her husband's case and did the besmirching.
She gets him in a compromising situation before a newspaper camera — but by this time he has so far given in to the Chatterton charms that he doesn't care. Moreover, he has proven his decency to her by getting back her child and attacking the ex-husband, involved with a baby-talking blonde. Hubert Druce shines in a bit, as does Danny Healey as a reporter. Another star in the blazing crown of Chatterton, the stage's supreme gift to the talkies. All Talkie.
Photoplay March 1930
Vintage magazines
Photoplay , March 1930
Photoplay , March 1930
Photoplay , January 1931