Waterloo Bridge **** (1931, Mae Clarke, Douglass Montgomery, Doris Lloyd) – Classic Movie Review 5421

Director James Whale’s 1931 Universal Pictures vintage romance is the first of three versions of Robert E Sherwood’s play, which made good movies but had a disappointingly short run on the Broadway stage.

Kent Douglass [Douglass Montgomery] stars as sensitive, injured Canadian army officer Roy Cronin, who meets a cynical prostitute called Myra Deauville (Mae Clarke) during a World War One Zeppelin air raid over London’s Waterloo Bridge. Myra is an American chorus girl who can’t get respectable work in London during the war, and is forced into prostitution to support herself. She meets her clients on Waterloo Bridge, near Waterloo Station, where soldiers on leave arrive.

The innocent Roy, a fellow American, goes back to her flat with Myra, falls in love with her, and then proposes marriage, thinking that she is just the sweet chorus girl she advertises.

[Spoiler alert] Roy takes her home to meet his well-bred parents and she tells the truth to his mother (Enid Bennett), who talks her out of the wedding. He returns to the war, she returns to the streets.

It is still a very sweet and watchable movie, even if the love story is soppy and dated, imaginatively directed by Whale (in his first film after his 1930 American breakthrough Journey’s End), with a fine eye to authentic performances, London detail and to the art of cinema.

Among several fine portrayals, Clarke gives an appealingly naturalistic performance, the young Bette Davis (aged 23 in her third film) is cute as Douglass’s sister Janet and Frederick Kerr also stands out in a comic turn as Douglass’s deaf step-father, retired British Major Fred Wetherby.

The main screenplay is by Whale’s friend Benn W Levy, with additional dialogue and continuity by Tom Reed.

Also in the cast are Doris Lloyd, Ethel Griffies, Rita Carlisle and Billy Bevan.

Kent Douglass later changed his acting name to Douglass Montgomery.

It was filmed far from Waterloo Bridge – in Pasadena, California.

With the controversial prostitution theme, Chicago, New York City and Pennsylvania censor boards demanded extensive cuts and it was impossible to re-release the film after the US Production Code was enforced in July 1934.

However, it was remade in 1940 by MGM, who bought the rights, as Waterloo Bridge with Vivien Leigh and Robert Taylor and in 1956 as Gaby with Leslie Caron and John Kerr.

It was stored in Universal vaults for 35 years, re-discovered in 1975, but the MGM and Universal joint contract prevented it from being seen for 20 more years.

It was released on 5 December 2006 on DVD with two other controversial movies, Baby Face (1933) and Red-Headed Woman (1932) with Jean Harlow.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5421

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