Adolphe Jean Menjou (1890-1963) was born in Pittsburgh, but for almost fifty years he epitomized a type of continental sophistication on the screen.
Menjou made his debut in 1914 for the Vitagraph Company and within a few years had become a supporting player of note, appearing in films as prestigious as The Three Musketeers (playing the King) and The Sheik (both 1921).
Menjou’s role as the seducer in Chaplin’s A Woman of Paris (1923) was the template for the kind of philandering, morally-questionable characters he made his speciality. He was never the leading man, but always brought considerable added value to the films he was in. His sole Oscar nomination was for playing Walter Burns in The Front Page (1931).
Menjou was a leading Hollywood conservative, though arguably more nuanced in his views than some of his colleagues.
Adolphe Menjou’s greatest performance may have been one of his last, as the corrupt general in Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory (1957). Much earlier, he had appeared, with typical suavity, in the 1930 version of New Moon.
The ocean liner New Moon is on the Caspian Sea, sailing to the Russian port of Krasnov. A party of Russian soldiers are on board [Gypsy Chorus].Lieutenant Michael Petroff, a womanizer, is at a bar, flirting in the mirror with a young woman. He is warned that the woman is Princess Tanya Strogoff, who is accompanied by her uncle, Count Igor, and her aunt, Countess Anastasia. Michael immediately leaves, but Tanya follows him out.
Michael Petroff entertains his fellow travellers with the bawdy ‘Farmer’s Daughter’
Anastasia panics when she notices Tanya’s absence, knowing what always happens when her niece disappears.
Tanya watches Michael sing with a crowd of gypsies and soldiers [Farmer’s Daughter]; the song is in a gypsy language and is clearly risqué. Michael notices Tanya just as she is being dragged away by her aunt. He fears he will be in trouble and explains to his orderly, Potkin, that he does not like princesses, because they think they are different from other women.
Michael spots a beautiful young woman and follows her, entering a room where he finds Tanya waiting. She interrogates him about the song he was singing, asking to hear the lyrics, so Michael cleans them up. Tanya then reveals that she understands the gypsy language and is fully aware of how suggestive the words are [Farmer’s Daughter]. Michael realizes that Tanya had used her servant to lure him into the room.
They drink and talk, and Michael confesses that he had almost forgotten that she was a princess. Tanya offers to help him forget altogether and they kiss. Igor knocks at the door. Anastasia has sent him to ask what Tanya is doing, but the insouciant Igor clearly knows exactly what is going on. He returns to his cabin and, when Anastasia asks if Tanya is in bed, replies “not yet”.
On the last evening of the voyage, Michael and Tanya are alone on deck, where she continues to flirt with him. Michael asks when they will be able to stop pretending that they do not love each other. Tanya promises that it will be the following day. Tanya is prevailed upon to sing and she asks Michael to join her [Wanting You].
Princess Tanya Strogoff (Grace Moore), getting along nicely with Michael
In Krasnov, Tanya allows Michael to believe that they will see each other again, but he soon realizes that she has come to Krasnov to marry the wealthy governor, Boris Brusiloff. Michael drowns his sorrows in a tavern [Lover Come Back to Me].
At the governor’s palace, a ball is being held in Tanya’s honour. Igor warns his niece to keep out of dark corners until the marriage is in the bag. Tanya is very coy with Boris, to the extent that he calls her prudish [One Kiss]. Michael crashes the ball and dances with Tanya, who tries to convince him they merely had a shipboard flirtation. He leads her into a private room, and Igor is unable to prevent Boris from following. Boris makes it clear that he understands what happened on the ship and does not care. Tanya pretends Michael was returning her lost bracelet, and Boris rewards him by appointing him to command Fort Darvaz. This is a garrison in the Caucasus Mountains where the soldiers have been known to murder their officers.
Boris announces his forthcoming marriage and Michael expresses his congratulations by taking to the stage and singing an insulting song [What Is Your Price Madam?]. Tanya says she will not forget the insult.
The next day, Michael and a handful of troops arrive at Fort Darvaz, only to see the current commander rush through the gates, blinded in both eyes. He falls to his death. Michael quells the mutiny by killing anyone who raises a hand against him.
Michael is in urgent need of some stout-hearted men
Later, observers at the fort see Turkomans from across the border massing for an attack. Tanya arrives unexpectedly and lashes Michael across the face in payment for his insult. Michael tells Tanya and Igor, who has driven her, that they must leave immediately as an attack is pending. Potkin rides in, badly wounded, to report 1500 Turkomans massing in the valley. Michael orders a telegram sent to the governor, but the lines are cut and it is unclear whether or not the message got through.
It is now too late for Tanya and Igor to leave. Potkin dies, and the priest suggests that they all prepare themselves for death, as the fort is surrounded.Tanya apologizes to Michael for being the kind of person she is, and tells him that if she had her time over again, she would do things very differently. They embrace and are married by the priest.
Michael tells his men that their only chance is a surprise attack on the enemy during the night. The soldiers are scornful at first, but Michael wins them round [Stout Hearted Men]. They ride out and launch their attack; the fighting is fierce and bloody.
The next morning, Tanya and Igor are waiting for Michael to return. Boris arrives with reinforcements, and assumes that Michael and the garrison have deserted. Tanya disdainfully tells him the truth. One soldier has been found and he reports that there are no other survivors. Tanya tells Boris that she loved Michael, but Boris says it does not matter. He sends a telegram to the Czar, recommending three medals for Michael. Tanya cannot stop herself looking everywhere for Michael [Lover Come Back to Me]. She hears the voices of Michael and his troops [Lover Come Back to Me].
Igor secures a promotion for Michael and tells Boris that Tanya and Michael are married. Tanya has rushed to meet Michael and they ride into the fort together. With sang-froid, Boris toasts them.
Some ThoughtsNo thesaurus is needed to find the best word to describe A Lady’s Morals. ‘Dull’ is the obvious choice.
Jenny Lind (Grace Moore) is affronted by the ardour of stalker Paul Brandt (Reginald Denny)
Grace Moore was the second star of the Metropolitan Opera signed up by MGM but, unlike Lawrence Tibbett, she has no onscreen charisma. In real life–and judging from her enjoyable autobiography–Moore was lively and vivacious, but none of that comes across in her film debut. Her performance is far too weak to carry the picture, and no one knew that better than Moore herself, who wrote scathingly about it.
She is not helped by the fact that the film’s subject, Jenny Lind, lived a stainless and uneventful life, reflected in the fact that the only moment of drama in A Lady’s Morals is a bout of stage fright.
Reginald Denny’s mannered performance aonly adequate support. In his first scenes he seems to be continuing his irritating performance as Bob in Madam Satan; later, he is self-sacrificing. Wallace Beery makes nothing of his brief appearance as P T Barnum, because he is given nothing to do. He was given another, and better, stab at the role in The Mighty Barnum (1934).
Jenny Lind is about to be overwhelmed by stage fright
Sidney Franklin’s direction and George Barnes’s cinematography are workmanlike, but it is the screenplay that really disappoints. Dorothy Farnum was forced to fictionalize Jenny Lind’s unexciting life, but produces only a hackneyed tale involving blindness brought on by being hit on the head with a bottle.
MGM scored something of a coup by persuading the venerable Carrie Jacobs-Bond to contribute the song ostensibly written by Denny’s character, but otherwise the newly-written score is workaday. This is in contrast to the songs by Donizetti and Bellini. The studio had put a toe in the water of Grand Opera in Call of the Flesh, and continues the experiment here. Further steps were curtailed, however, by the 1932 moratorium.
Jenny and Paul are reunited in a happy ending that would have surprised the real Jenny Lind’s husband
By all accounts, Jenny Lind (1931), the French remake of A Lady’s Morals, was a better film. Running slightly longer, it was directed by the talented Arthur Robison and playwright Jacques Deval worked on the screenplay.
James Kendall Brock (1901-63) was a sound recording engineer who spent most of his career at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and worked on sixteen musicals during that time.
Brock began, under the supervision of Douglas Shearer, on A Lady’s Morals. Here, as for most pictures, he was uncredited.
Barnes was the sound mixer on The Merry Widow and A Night at the Opera, then sound engineer on The Great Ziegfeld, Maytime, The Girl of the Golden West, Du Barry Was a Lady, On an Island With You, Easter Parade, Take Me Out to the Ball Game, The Band Wagon, Easy to Love, The Student Prince, Interrupted Melody, Merry Andrew and Gigi.
Lush is a word often applied (though not in the South Wales sense) to the work of cinematographer George Scott Barnes (1892-1953). His lighting of black-and-white film, combined with effortless tracking shots, made him an exemplar of the classical Hollywood style. He also served as a mentor to Glenn Toland, who further developed Barnes’s interest in dep focus.
Barnes made his first film as cinematographer for the Thomas Ince Company, but was for many years a mainstay of Samuel Goldwyn Productions. He worked for a variety of studios during his career, and for many of the foremost directors, including Hitchcock (winning the Oscar for Rebecca [1940]), Frank Capra, Leo McCarey, Henry King, Billy Wilder, Cecil B DeMille and John Ford (for whom he shot the infamous Sex Hygiene [1942]).
Carrie Minetta Jacobs-Bond (1862-1946) was a prolific songwriter and by far the most successful female composer of her day. But she is remembered today, if she is remembered at all, for one piece: the parlour song ‘I Love You Truly’, of which about eight million sheet music copies were sold.
A late song by Jacobs-Bond, ‘Lovely Hour’, was performed by Grace Moore in A Lady’s Morals.
Harry MacGregor Woods (1896-1970) was a Tin Pan Alley composer whose name is rarely heard, but who produced many standards from the Great American Songbook. These included ‘When the Red, Red Robin (Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin’ Along)’, ‘I’m Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover’, ‘Side by Side’ and ‘Try a Little Tenderness’.
Woods rarely wrote directly for the screen, though his songs have been heard in hundreds of films. One exception was Metro’s A Lady’s Morals.
‘When the Red, Red Robin’ is sung by Susan Hayward in I’ll Cry Tomorrow.
Oscar Nathan Strauss [sic] (1870-1954) was a highly-productive Viennese composer of operettas, orchestral music, film scores and songs. His most famous work, The Chocolate Soldier (1908), was ostensibly filmed by MGM, but little of Straus’s music was used.
Straus spent a few years working in America from 1930, during which time he contributed music to A Lady’s Morals and, perhaps more memorably, to two Lubitsch musicals, The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) and One Hour with You (1932).
Late in life, Straus provided the scores for two masterpieces by Max Ophuls, La ronde (1950) and Madame de… (1953).
Arthur Reichman (1886-1944) was a successful playwright who dabbled in screenwriting during the 1930s.
Richman wrote a string of successful plays performed on Broadway in the 1920, including The Awful Truth (1922), which was filmed several times, most successfully with Cary Grant and Irene Dunn in 1937. In 1924, he was elected President of the Dramatists Guild of America.
Richman’s screen work was generally uninspiring, though he did work without credit on Imitation of Life (1934). For MGM, he contributed dialogue to A Lady’s Morals.
