A Lost Lady * (1934, Barbara Stanwyck, Frank Morgan, Ricardo Cortez) – Classic Movie Review 6775

‘The Love Idyll of the Age!’ screams the poster but the movie is way less exciting. Director Alfred E Green’s 1934 drama A Lost Lady stars Barbara Stanwyck as Marian Ormsby, whose unfaithful fiancé is murdered just two days before their wedding. She gets depressed, is rescued in the Rockies by kindly older lawyer Daniel ‘Dan’ Forrester (Frank Morgan) and then marries him out of gratitude, after he helps her back to health. But then she falls for the handsome young transport owner Frank Ellinger (Ricardo Cortez). Result – misery both for Stanwyck and the movie’s audiences.

Gene Markey and Kathryn Scola’s complacent, self-satisfied and plain obvious screenplay is reworked from Willa Cather’s Pulitzer novel. Both the script and Green’s sluggish direction let down the stars, though, as always, Stanwyck certainly does her darnedest to entertain, glamorously attired in gowns by Orry-Kelly.

Also in the cast are Lyle Talbot, Philip Reed, Hobart Cavanaugh, Henry Kolker, Rafaella Ottiano, Walter Walker, Mary Forbes, Samuel S Hinds, Jameson Thomas, Edward Keane, Harry Seymour, Willy Fung and Edward McWade.

A Lost Lady, also known as the considerably more upbeat Courageous in the UK, is directed by Alfred E Green, runs 61 minutes, is a First National production, is released by Warner Bros, is written by Gene Markey and Kathryn Scola, is shot in black and white by Sid [Sidney] Hickox, and scored by Ray Heindorf and Heinz Roemheld, with Art Direction by Jack Okey.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6775

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