Dull, primitive early talkie from a Frederick Lonsdale stage success. The camera's nailed to the floor, the sound's iffy, and the performances and attitudes aren't just from another era, they're from another planet. Ruth Chatterton, never saying "terribly" when "teddibly" will do, is the stage actress (she does a musical scene, and if that's not her voice, it's a good double) who's looked down on by the family of the Brit gentleman (Ralph Forbes, boring) who wants to marry her. So she conveniently falls in love with his pal Basil Rathbone, also uninteresting, and the matter gets sorted out in clipped accents. Ruth's supposed to be self-sacrificing and appealing but she's haughty and supercilious, and the pacing's glacial. You don't care about these upper-class twits, and it's a relief when it's all ironed out. Marginally compelling as an example of movies learning to talk, but it's really, really stagebound, and director Sidney Franklin lingers over every stilted word as if it were Scripture.
Review of The Lady of Scandal
