Outcast Lady ** (1934, Constance Bennett, Herbert Marshall, Mrs Patrick Campbell, Hugh Williams) – Classic Movie Review 10,097

‘A WOMAN OF MAGIC… LOVED BY ALL MEN… EXCEPT THE ONLY MAN IN THE WORLD SHE WANTED.’

Director Robert Z Leonard’s 1934 romantic drama Outcast Lady [A Woman of the World] stars Constance Bennett, Herbert Marshall, Mrs Patrick Campbell and Hugh Williams, and is fascinating as the second film of Michael Arlen’s provocative novel The Green Hat, and the first in sound.

The Green Hat, published in 1924, launching Arlen’s fame and fortune, narrates the short life and violent death of the femme fatale Iris Storm, the dashing widow owner of a yellow Hispano-Suiza luxury car and the green hat.

Arlen adapted the novel into a 1925 Broadway play and then it became a movie, the silent 1928 Hollywood film A Woman of Affairs, which had to change plot points in the novel about homosexuality and venereal disease.

Here MGM rework the silent 1928 Hollywood film A Woman of Affairs starring Greta Garbo and John Gilbert as a rickety vehicle for Constance Bennett as Iris March Fenwick, the unfortunate, rich, promiscuous lady of the title. Iris loves Napier (Herbert Marshall), the son of a prominent English father (Henry Stephenson), who bans their marriage. Iris’s husband Boy Fenwick (Ralph Forbes) has a secret past and kills himself, while her troubled drunken brother Gerald March (Hugh Williams) dies.

Bennett is the only American in the British-set film, and, if the film is feeble, at least they have captured the British atmosphere. But the muddled, melodramatic, unconvincing screenplay by Zoe Akins (held back by censorship) does not help Bennett’s performance one bit, though the loyal Brit support actors do.

Outcast Lady is executive produced by Irving Thalberg and was originally planned for his wife Norma Shearer.

Also in the cast are Herbert Marshall as Napier Harpenden, Mrs Patrick Campbell as Lady Eve, Elizabeth Allan as Venice Harpenden, Henry Stephenson as Sir Maurice Harpenden, Robert Loraine as Hilary, Lumsden Hare as Guy, Alec B Francis as Truble and Leo G Carroll as Dr Conrad Masters.

Outcast Lady [A Woman of the World] is directed by Robert Z Leonard, runs 77 minutes, is made by MGM, is released by MGM, is written by Zoe Akins, based on Michael Arlen’s novel The Green Hat, is shot in black and white by Charles Rosher, is produced by Irving Thalberg (executive producer) and Robert Z Leonard, is scored by stock music, with production designs by Cedric Gibbons, with gowns by Adrian.

Michael Arlen’s story The Golden Arrow, first published in the 14 September 1935 issue of Liberty weekly general-interest magazine, became the 1936 Bette Davis movie The Golden Arrow.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,097

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