The Sin of Madelon Claudet [The Lullaby] ** (1931, Helen Hayes, Robert Young, Neil Hamilton, Lewis Stone) – Classic Movie Review 6815

Helen Hayes won the 1932 Best Actress Oscar for her wild overacting as the newly-wed French country woman Madelon Claudet, who is bullied by her new mother-in-law, after marrying US artist Larry (Neil Hamilton), who leaves her for another woman. 

The Madame X-style plot was hackneyed even then in the pre-Code era, but the sheer melodramatic force of director Edgar Selwyn’s very dated 1931 classic weepie film The Sin of Madelon Claudet [The Lullaby] makes the movie still worth a viewing.

Helen Hayes won the 1932 Best Actress Oscar for her wild overacting as the newly-wed French country woman Madelon Claudet, who is made to give up her bastard son and is bullied by her new mother-in-law, after marrying US artist Larry (Neil Hamilton), who promptly leaves her for another woman.

Jewel thief Carlo Boretti (Lewis Stone) helps her, but he commits suicide before the police can arrest him and she is jailed for ten years as Carlo’s criminal associate.

Later, freed from jail, the wrongly convicted Madelon becomes a prostitute (er, street walker) and thief to support her illegitimate son (Robert Young) and send him to medical school and he becomes Dr Claudet.

The Sin of Madelon Claudet is overheated and histrionic, and rather unsophisticated by today’s standards, but Hayes’s overacting performance still tugs at the heartstrings. She went on to win her second Oscar in 1970 for her role in Airport.

It is written by Charles MacArthur, based on the play The Lullaby by Edward Knoblock, MacArthur and Hayes were married from 17 August 1928 till his death on 21 April 1956, and had two children. They are the adoptive parents of actor James MacArthur.

Also in the cast are Neil Hamilton, Lewis Stone, Marie Prévost, Cliff Edwards, Karen Morley, Jean Hersholt, Charles Winninger, Alan Hale Sr (real name Rufus MacKahan), Halliwell Hobbes, Lennox Pawle, Russ Powell, Otto Hoffman and Frankie Darro.

The film originally was titled The Lullaby, but it was attacked by critics at its first preview, so MGM producer Irving Thalberg called in Hayes’s playwright husband Charles MacArthur, who totally revised the script, omitting inconsequential characters and framing the story as a flashback. Hayes completed  Arrowsmith (1931) and then shot her new scenes for the retitled The Sin of Madelon Claudet, which then opened to widespread acclaim.

The score includes the song ‘Adios Amor’.

The Sin of Madelon Claudet (also known as The Lullaby in GB) is directed by Edgar Selwyn, runs 75 minutes, is made and released by MGM, is written by Charles MacArthur, based on the play The Lullaby by Edward Knoblock, is shot in black and white by Oliver T Marsh, is produced by Harry Rapf, and is designed by Cedric Gibbons.

The cast are Helen Hayes as Madelon Claudet, Lewis Stone as Carlo Boretti, Neil Hamilton as Larry Maynard, Cliff Edwards as Victor Lebeau, Jean Hersholt as Dr Dulac, Marie Prevost as Rosalie Lebeau, Robert Young as Dr Lawrence Claudet, Karen Morley as Alice Claudet, Charles Winninger as Photographer M. Novella, Alan Hale Sr as Hubert, Halliwell Hobbes as Boretti’s Butler Roget, Lennox Pawle as Felix St. Jacques, Russ Powell as Monsieur Claudet, Otto Hoffman, and Frankie Darro as young Lawrence Claudet as a boy.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6815

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