Ruth Chatterton Movies
Ruth Chatterton was a dignified, sophisticated, brittle, blonde leading lady. At age 12, she debuted on stage in a stock production, reached Broadway by age 18, then triumphed at 20 as the star of Daddy Long Legs. She didn't break into films until her mid-30s, starting with Sins of the Fathers (1928) opposite Emil Jannings. She was subsequently nominated for "Best Actress" Oscars for her work in Madame X (1929) and Sarah and Son (1930), but is perhaps best remembered as Walter Huston's spoiled, selfish wife in Dodsworth (1936), after the making of which she left Hollywood. She went on to appear in two British productions, then retired from the screen. She continued a successful and variety-filled career on the stage, once directing a play but more usually starring in Broadway productions. She authored a Broadway play, Monsieur Brotonneau (1930), as well as several novels in the '50s. Chatterton was also a licensed pilot who flew her own plane cross-country. She was married three times, each time to an actor: Ralph Forbes (1924-32), George Brent (1932-34), and Barry Thomson (1942-his death in 1960). ~ All Movie Guide- 1928
The great German actor Emil Jannings closed out the American phase of his film career with the Paramount part-talkie Sins of the Fathers. Jannings is cast as Wilhelm Spangler, who works as a head waiter to provide for his pregnant wife (ZaSu Pitts). As their family grows and grows, Spangler becomes more and more successful in his chosen profession, eventually putting enough money together to buy his own restaurant. The now-prosperous Spangler begins playing the filed with other women, including temptress Gretta (Ruth Chatterton). Upon learning about her husband's infidelities, Mother Spangler goes into a catatonic shock, which eventually leads to her death. With no "guiding force" at home, Spangler embarks upon a life of crime as a Prohibition bootlegger. The sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons at last when Spangler's beloved son Tom (Barry Norton) is blinded after drinking some of his dad's bootleg hootch. Later on, Spangler is thrown in jail, prompting the far-from-faithful Gretta to walk out on him. After serving his term, Spangler starts life all over again from the bottom as a waiter. An unhappy ending is averted when Spangler is tearfully reunited with son Tom, whose sight has been restored. Outside of a bizarre sequence in which Emil Jannings sings in a whiskey baritone, Sins of the Fathers was distinguished by the presence of Ruth Chatterton, whose first film this was. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Emil Jannings, ZaSu Pitts, (more)
- 1929
Charming Sinners was a stilted adaptation of Somerset Maugham's play The Constant Wife. Robert Miles (Clive Brook) starts the ball rolling when he falls in love with Anne-Marie Whitley (Mary Nolan), the best friend of his own wife Kathryn (Ruth Chatterton). In retaliation, Kathryn begins a flirtation with her former boyfriend Karl Kraley (William Powell). After reels and reels of verbal fencing, the status quo is re-established, and Robert and Kathryn are reunited. So dour and restrained was Clive Brook's performance that one film critic pretended to mistake him for the family butler! Charming Sinners was also filmed in several foreign-language versions. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ruth Chatterton, Clive Brook, (more)
- 1929
The early Paramount talkie The Dummy represented a collaboration of sorts between screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, who adapted the play on which the film was based, and Mankiewicz' brother Joseph, who wrote the subtitles for the film's silent version. The title character is office-boy Barney, played by Mickey Bennett. Pretending to be a deaf-mute, Barney tries to trump his detective boss Walter Babbing (John Cromwell) by tracking down the person who kidnapped Peggy Meredith (Vondell Darr), the daughter of wealthy Agnes and Trumbull Meredith (Ruth Chatterton, Frederic March). The guilty party turns out to be Rose Gleason, played by ZaSu Pitts in a rare non-comic role. Previously filmed as a silent picture with Jack Pickford (Mary's brother) in the lead, The Dummy suffered from substandard sound reproduction, but like most 1929 "talkers" it was a big success. John Cromwell, the actor who plays "The Dummy's" boss, is better known for his directorial achievements; his son, James Cromwell, would earn an Oscar nomination for his performance in the 1995 fantasy Babe. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ruth Chatterton, Fredric March, (more)
- 1929
Alexandre Brisson's weepy 1906 play had already been filmed three times when the 1929 talkie Madame X made its debut. Ruth Chatterton stars as a low-born wife of a socialite, whose aristocratic in-laws kick her out when she gives birth to a baby boy of dubious parentage. The boy, who has been led to believe his mother is dead, grows up to become a renowned attorney (Raymond Hackett). Mama Chatterton takes to the streets, but proudly monitors her son's progress from afar. When Chatterton is accused of murder, her defense attorney is none other than her son. She refuses to tell him the truth about their relationship, even though that information may make the difference between execution and exoneration. Madame X would be remade three more times over the next five decades; to avoid confusion with these later versions, the 1929 Madame X has been retitled Absinthe for its TV showings. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ruth Chatterton, Lewis Stone, (more)
- 1929
The Doctor's Secret was adapted by director William C. DeMille from James M. Barrie's play Half an Hour. After marrying wealthy Richard Garson (H.B. Warner) for his money and prestige, Lillian Garson (Ruth Chatterton) grows weary of her stuffed-shirt husband and decides to run off with another man. While disembarking from a cab to meet Lillian, her lover is struck down and killed by a hit-and-run driver. On the scene of the accident is Dr. Brodie (Robert Edeson), who happens to be an old friend of Garson's. That evening, at a cocktail party held by Garson, Dr. Brodie begins relating the story of the unfortunate accident victim and his beautiful paramour. As the story unfolds, Garson begins to suspect that Lillian, who is late for the party, is the "woman in the case." When Lillian finally shows up, her husband confronts her with his suspicions. But Dr. Brodie saves the day by lying like a gentlemen, denying that he and the errant wife have ever met before. Doctor's Secret was one of the first Hollywood talkies to be simultaneously filmed in foreign-language versions. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ruth Chatterton, H.B. Warner, (more)
- 1930
Considered the best of the all-star "studio" musicals of 1929 and 1930, Paramount on Parade utilized the talents of practically everyone on the Paramount Pictures payroll. Under the supervision of British musical-comedy favorite Elsie Janis, 11 top directors contributed to the project: Dorothy Arzner, Otto Brower, Edmund Goulding, Victor Heerman, Edwin H. Knopf, Rowland V. Lee, Ernst Lubitsch, Lothar Mendes, Victor Schertzinger, Edward Sutherland and Frank Tuttle. Introduced by masters of ceremonies Jack Oakie, Skeets Gallegher and Leon Errol, the film is a vaudeville-like maelstrom of musical duets, comedy sketches, occasional dramatic interludes, and spectacular production numbers. To mention all the highlights would take a book in itself but among them are Nancy Carroll's rendition of "Dancing to Save Your Sole" (performed inside a giant shoe!); Maurice Chevalier (and chorus) soaring heavenward in "Sweeping the Clouds Away" ; child actress Mitzi Green's dead-on impersonations of Chevalier, George Arliss, Moran & Mack and Helen "Boop-a-doop" Kane; Ernst Lubitsch's witty staging of an Apache dance in the style of a polite boudoir farce, with Chevalier (again) and Evelyn Brent; Clara Bow's saucy "I'm True to the Navy Now" ; the wish-fulfillment sketch "Impulses," in which George Bancroft and Kay Francis delightedly upset a dinner party by saying what's really on their minds; and best of all, "Murder Will Out," a murder-mystery parody wherein Fu Manchu (Warner Oland) bumps off Sherlock Holmes (Clive Brook) and Philo Vance (William Powell) when they refuse to give him proper credit for his killing of Jack Oakie. Only the dramatic sketch with Frederic March and Ruth Chatterton truly creaks when seen today. Originally released at 102 minutes, Paramount on Parade is presently available only in an 80-minute version, with all its Technicolor sequences missing: casualties include the elaborate "Drink to the Girl of My Dreams" number, directed by Edmund Goulding and featuring Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur and Fay Wray, and Harry Green's dialect song "Isadore the Toreodor". ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Maurice Chevalier, Richard Arlen, (more)
- 1930
Wiegenlied is the German-language version of the early-talkie weepie Sarah and Son. The plot remains substantially the same, with the heroine losing her child when her no-good husband gives the kid up for adoption. Becoming a world-famous opera singer in Europe, she returns to America to fight for the custody of her son. Things work out far better than imagined as the heroine not only reclaims her son but also wins the undying love of the foster parents' attorney. The original Sarah and Son starred Ruth Chatterton as the mother, Fredric March as the lawyer and Philipe de Lacy as the son; the same actors essayed these roles in Wiegenlied, sometimes speaking their German dialogue phonetically, sometimes merely moving their lips as their words are spoken off-camera by other performers. Outside of the obvious language differences, the two films parted company only in locale: in the German remake, Chatterton becomes famous in America, then returned to Europe, rather than the other way around. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ruth Chatterton, Fredric March, (more)
- 1930
In this sassy romantic comedy, Clive Brook plays Neil Dunlap, a lawyer who is heartbroken when his wife leaves him. Neil is out drowning his sorrows when he meets Pansy Gray (Ruth Chatterton), a high-spirited chorus girl. Neil and Pansy hit the town, and a brutally hung-over Neil wakes up the next day to discover that he and Patsy are now man and wife. Neil's immediate reaction is that he's made a horrible mistake, but he finds Pansy so sweet, and she seems to taken with him, that he doesn't have the heart to tell her he wants a divorce. Against the advice of family and friends, Neil tries to make the marriage work, and he struggles to remodel Pansy into a respectable lady. Anybody's Woman was directed by Dorothy Arzner, one of Hollywood's first (and only) successful female directors. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ruth Chatterton, Clive Brook, (more)
- 1930
In this drama, a prominent society woman causes a scandal when she begins a torrid affair with the dashing lifeguard who saved her from drowning at a recent beach party. Her angry husband retains an attorney and files for divorce. More trouble ensues when his lawyer begins falling for his client's wife as well. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Clive Brook, Dan Healy, (more)
- 1930
In this drama, a young wife is devastated to discover that her husband has sold their son to a wealthy couple and left her. The woman begs the couple to return the infant, but the heartless duo refuses. The woman goes on to become an opera star and at the peak of her fame, again goes to the couple. This time they find the woman so charming that they agree to return the child. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ruth Chatterton, Fredric March, (more)
- 1930
In this melodrama, two young people fall in love and desire to wed, but their union is opposed by their families. As a result, the two decide to make love out of wedlock and the girl gets pregnant. Not long afterward, her young lover is killed and she must raise her baby alone until a much older man begins to take an interest in her. Her family is all for the union and without enthusiasm, she agrees to marry him. She then bears a daughter and swears that her daughter will know true romance. Unfortunately, she is again opposed by her husband the religious fanatic who ends up sending the girl to China as a missionary. While abroad, she meets a handsome young man, and begins to fall in love. This is confusing for her until her dying mother sends her a telepathic message encouraging her to go ahead and fall in love. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ruth Chatterton, Paul Lukas, (more)
- 1930
Based on Frederick Lonsdale's The High Road, The Lady of Scandal is typical of the "teacup drama" genre so prevalent during the early talkie period. It all begins with down-to-earth musical comedy star Elsie (Ruth Chatterton) visiting the home of her aristocratic fiancee, John (Ralph Forbes. She briefly becomes acquainted with his cousin Edward (Basil Rathbone), an individual of dubious character allegedly nursing an affair with a married woman. In time, two changes occur during Elsie's visit to the stiff and formal household: first, each family member falls under her spell and "loosens up"; Elsie and Edward also become amorously entwined, and in the end - when the husband of Edward's married lover dies, Elsie must make a sacrifice to this woman. In the process, she also realizes that she does not love John and wishes to return to the theater. Extremely stagy and garrulous, the film also incorporates a great deal of humor to offset the prospective melodramatic pitfalls of the material. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ruth Chatterton, Basil Rathbone, (more)
- 1931
A socially prominent wife must choose between avoiding scandal and her own happiness in this British drama. According to social convention, the wife is expected to gracefully ignore her husband's constant philandering, and under no circumstances can she get a divorce. But her husband's actions are difficult to ignore as he is sleeping with her brother's wife. She decides to escape and head for Switzerland. There she gets involved with another. Meanwhile, her husband and his lover are killed in an automobile crash. When the wife explains that the two were en route to meet her and her lover, a major scandal erupts and her social status is destroyed. Fortunately, she is now free to marry her new love and happiness ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ruth Chatterton, Paul Lukas, (more)
- 1931
The only thing magnificent about Magnificent Lie is its title. As usual, Ruth Chatterton plays a woman of variable morals, this time a seedy cafe entertainer. Ralph Bellamy costars as a recently blinded man, whose sole reason for living is his adulation of a famous French singing star. To boost the man's morale, Chatterton impersonates the star in his presence. They fall in love...but will it last once the ruse is revealed? Magnificent Lie features Charles Boyer in a supporting role. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ruth Chatterton, Ralph Bellamy, (more)
- 1931
In this drama, a Russian woman marries a British aristocrat, bears him a daughter, and is forced to abandon them by his snooty family when he decides to run for Parliament because constituents would disapprove of her eccentric Russian ways. The poor wife moves to Paris and many years pass. The daughter travels to Paris, and there unknowingly meets her mother who gives her some sage advice when the young woman falls in love with a man her father disapproves of. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ruth Chatterton, Ivor Novello, (more)
- 1932
A talented cast does its best with a nonsensical script in The Rich are Always With Us. Ruth Chatterton stars as a witty socialite saddled with caddish husband John Miljan. Upon learning that Miljan has been fooling around with Adrienne Dore, Chatterton divorces him, whereupon his brokerage firm goes belly-up, for which our heroine holds herself responsible. She undergoes another guilt trip when Miljan's second wife dies in a car crash. Throughout all this, Chatterton denies herself true love in the person of foreign correspondent George Brent, who became Chatterton's husband during filming. Bette Davis enjoys an early scene-chewing opportunity as a predatory young debutante who sets her sights for the handsome Brent. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ruth Chatterton, George Brent, (more)
- 1932
In this drama, a frustrated wife, unable to get pregnant by her husband, decides to sleep with another in hopes of finally getting the child she so desperately wants. She ends up having an affair with a brain surgeon. He manages to get her pregnant and after it is born, she claims the child is her husband's. Years pass. One day the boy falls off a horse and is seriously injured. After the surgeon saves his life, the boy's mother confesses that he is the boy's real father, but then she tells him she still wants to stay with her husband. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ruth Chatterton, Paul Lukas, (more)
- 1932
In this drama, set in 1929 when the stock market crashed, a selfish, money-grubbing wife ruins her husband, an accountant after she feeds him a fake stock market tip. Prior to that, she had been having an affair with a wealthy fellow. She destroys her husband because she is bored with her lover and wants to start fresh in Bermuda. On the island, she meets a wealthy Australian who wants to get married. Her husband wants his fortune back. To get it, he blackmail's his wife's former lover. The capricious woman soon tires of the Australian and returns to her spouse. She then tears up the blackmail check. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ruth Chatterton, George Brent, (more)
- 1933
This weepie, adapted from a play by Philip Dunning and George Abbott, is a vehicle for Ruth Chatterton as the titular Lilly. Her sufferings begin when she marries a man who later turns out to be a bigamist. She has their baby but marries another man so the child can have a father. The new husband is alcoholic and so Lilly falls in love with someone else, but when her husband breaks his back protecting her, she elects to stay with him. ~ Nicole Gagne, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ruth Chatterton, George Brent, (more)
- 1933
Ruth Chatterton tears up the screen in this fast-paced, lusty comedy. Alison Drake is an automobile magnate, a hard-nosed, hardboiled business woman making dozens of important decisions a day. In her private life, however, she is passionate and bold in her pursuit of male companionship, which she frequently finds among the ranks of her own employees and executives; the problem is that these men can't abide the fact that back at work, she's all business again; and she keeps having to get their long, mopey faces out of her presence by transferring them elsewhere. Then she meets Jim Thorne (George Brent), a gifted engineer who is attracted to Drake but isn't a callow, cowtowing yes-man, and isn't awed by her millions. After a few awkward encounters, they find a balance in their lives together, or so she thinks, until he proposes marriage. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ruth Chatterton, George Brent, (more)
- 1933
Jenny (Ruth Chatterton) becomes pregnant by a young man who is killed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Bearing her child in secret, Jenny gives up custody to a wealthy couple. The years pass, and through the auspices of a crooked politician (Louis Calhern), Jenny becomes the number one "madame" of San Francisco, with interests in several other illicit activities. Crusading district attorney Dan Reynolds Donald Cook decides to rid the city of Jenny's operations -- little suspecting that the notorious woman is actually his own mother. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ruth Chatterton, Donald Cook, (more)
- 1934
A Hollywood version of Jacques Deval's 1933 French drama Un Vie Perdue, Journal of a Crime stars Ruth Chatterton as Françoise Moliet, a proud Parisian who refuses to divorce her playwright husband Paul (Adolphe Menjou), even though he is rather publicly dallying with the star of his latest success, Odette (Claire Dodd). Françoise instead sneaks into the girl's dressing room and kills her, a crime for which gangster Costelli (Noel Madison) confesses. Having already one murder on his conscience, Costelli gallantly covers for the much-suffering Françoise, but she, in turn, is overcome with guilt and decides to turn herself in. En route to the police station, however, Françoise is struck by a car and loses her memory. Realizing that his wife has regained her lost innocence, Paul purchases a secluded villa by the sea where Françoise may recuperate. Costelli, meanwhile, is lead to the guillotine. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ruth Chatterton, Adolphe Menjou, (more)
In this highly acclaimed adaptation of Sinclair Lewis' novel, Walter Huston plays Sam Dodsworth, a good-hearted, middle-aged man who runs an auto manufacturing firm. His wife Fran (Ruth Chatterton) is obsessed with the notion that she's growing old, and she eventually persuades Sam to sell his interest in the company and take her to Europe. He agrees for the sake of their marriage, but before long Fran has begun to think of herself as a cosmopolitan sophisticate and thinks of Sam as dull and unadventurous. Craving excitement, Fran begins spending her time with other men and eventually informs Sam that she's leaving him for a minor member of royalty. While in Italy, Sam runs into Edith Cortright (Mary Astor), an attractive widow whom he first met while sailing to Europe. Edith seems to understand Sam in a way his wife does not, and they fall in love. However, Sam impulsively breaks off their relationship, only to discover in her absence just how deeply he cares for her. Dodsworth was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Walter Huston), and Best Supporting Actress (Maria Ouspenskaya), though only art director Richard Day walked away with an Oscar. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Walter Huston, Ruth Chatterton, (more)
- 1936
French actress Simone Simon made her American film debut in Girls' Dormitory. Simon portrays a twentyish student in a Swiss private school, harboring a secret passion for headmaster Herbert Marshall. For her own amusement, Simon writes an intense love letter to an imaginary beau; the letter falls in the hands of two snoopy teachers, who suspect the worst. Running away from her accusers, Simone has a chance meeting with Marshall, who reveals that he is in love with her. The official studio synopsis for Girl's Dormitory states that Simone nobly steps aside to allow a middle-aged teacher (Ruth Chatterton) to marry Marshall, but in the film itself Simon ends up with Marshall after all. The synopsis barely mentions Tyrone Power, appearing in his first film for 20th Century-Fox. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Herbert Marshall, Ruth Chatterton, (more)
- 1936
In this tragic drama, a pregnant daughter prepares to marry a man she doesn't love when her 'sister' tells her a story. It seems that when the older woman was a girl she too got pregnant by her lover. When her father found out, he had the impregnator sent to war where he was killed. Meanwhile he allowed his daughter to keep her little girl under the provision that she tell the child that she is her sister. The sister of course, is the woman's daughter. Unfortunately, when her father learns that his daughter has told her daughter the truth he has her committed to an asylum. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ruth Chatterton, Otto Kruger, (more)
