Laura Hope Crewes Movies

At his 1875 engagement party, Newland Archer (John Boles) is surprised to meet his childhood friend Ellen (Irene Dunne), now Countess Olenska; she's the cousin of his fiancee May (Julie Haydon). The strait-laced society of the time regards her as somewhat scandalous, but she's treated well by Newland and his family, so it's he whom she consults regarding a divorce. Although he talks her out of it at first, he reconsiders when he sees she's being pursued by philanderer Julius Beaufort (Lionel Atwill), but Ellen now realizes divorce would upset her family, especially her beloved grandmother (Helen Westley). Newland himself is strongly attracted to Ellen, and considers breaking his engagement to May, but he hasn't reckoned with the powerful rules of his society. The story is told by Newland to his grandson in flashback. ~ Bill Warren, All Movie Guide

In this comedy, a young couple are forced to marry after they are accidentally locked in a store overnight. Unfortunately for the young groom, his overbearing mother is unhappy with the match and keeps trying to get them divorced. She even follows them on their honeymoon. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

After saving RKO Radio from receivership with King Kong, producer-director Ernest B.. Schoedsack relaxed a bit with the comparatively sedate crime caper Blind Adventure. King Kong co-star Robert Armstrong plays Richard Bruce, an American in London who stumbles into the lair of a kidnap-blackmail gang. Playing his cards close to his vest, Bruce manages to get his hands on the "secret papers" that are so important to everyone in the story. He also wins the heroine, the aptly named Rose Thorne (Helen Mack, Armstrong's vis-a-vis in Son of Kong). Of the supporting players, Roland Young is terrific as a dry-witted burglar. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

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

Set in New York's Greenwich Village (specifically, on Bleecker Street), William Seiter's Rafter Romance is a cute romantic comedy, the plot of which contains echoes (or, more accurately, foreshadowings) of Shop Around The Corner. Ginger Rogers plays Mary Carroll, a young woman from upstate who came to New York to find a job and a career, but whose money has almost run out; Norman Foster is Jack Bacon, an aspiring artist living in the same building, in the attic loft, who is months behind on his rent, as well; their landlord, Max Eckbaum (George Sidney), a good-natured soul who wouldn't harm a flea, as he might put it, nevertheless has expenses to meet, and could have rented Mary's apartment to a paying tenant several times over. He comes up with the solution -- move Mary into Jack's loft; after all, Jack works all night as a watchman and sleeps all day, and Mary now has a job selling refrigerators (a relatively new household gadget in 1934) by telephone, that keeps her out all day. To make it all work for the two unwilling tenants, Eckbaum arranges so that neither one ever sees or knows who the other is, but each still manages to get the most dreadful impression of what the other is like, and a series of misunderstandings, and the inevitable crowding that goes on in these situations, leads to a series of increasingly annoying pranks aimed at the other. But their situation really gets complicated when Mary and Jack manage to cross paths and meet out of the apartment, each not knowing who the other is, vis-a-vis the loft, and start to fall in love. And matters get even more complicated (and the comedy ratcheted up several steps higher) by the presence of Robert Benchley as Mary's boss, a lecherous if bumbling executive; Laura Hope Crews as Jack's would-be "patron," a lonely, libidinous older woman with a ton of money; and Guinn Williams as Fritzie, a cab-driver who takes on the role (initially with her encouragement) of Mary's protector. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

New Morals for Old was the teasing title for a somewhat sedate film about the ongoing rejection of middle-class values by the youth of America. Robert Young, Myrna Loy, Donald Cook and Margaret Perry are among the freethinking young folk whose attitudes clash with those of their elders (including Lewis Stone, Laura Hope Crews and Jean Hersholt). The film's main crisis is nothing more scandalous than Robert Young's plans to pursue an art career over his father's objections. In an ironic coda, the younger people eventually marry, settle down, and become moralistic fuddy-duddies themselves. New Morals for Old was based on the John Van Druten play After All, which was set in London and thus added class consciousness to the basic generation-gap theme. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Trespasser was Gloria Swanson's first all-talking picture. All talk is right. Swanson plays a humble secretary who marries the son (Robert Ames) of a domineering millionaire (William Holden--no, not that William Holden). The father-in-law bullies Swanson into giving up his son; she agrees to step out of his life, proudly withholding the fact that she's about to become a mother. Later, Swanson enters her ex-husband's social class via an inheritance. Unfortunately, he's remarried to Kay Hammond, who is crippled and thus more needful of the man's love and comfort than self-reliant Swanson. Tearfully, Swanson gives up the man she loves, left only with her child and a bulging bank account. When Trespasser was remade by director Edmund Goulding as That Certain Woman with Bette Davis in 1937, a last-minute happy ending was tacked on--if one can call the death of wife number two a joyous event. As for the original film, Gloria Swanson proved (contrary to the popular belief engendered by Sunset Boulevard) that she could have been just as big a star in talkies as she'd been in silents (she even sings well); unfortunately her subsequent judgment in screenplay selection resulted in a string of flops. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide