Mary Forbes Movies

To date, this D.W. Griffith epic is the only talking-picture effort to encapsulate the entire life of Abraham Lincoln, from cradle to grave. The script, credited to Stephen Vincent Benet, manages to include all the familiar high points, including Lincoln's tragic romance with Ann Rutledge (Una Merkel, allegedly cast because of her resemblance to Griffith favorite Lillian Gish), his lawyer days in Illinois, his contentious marriage to Mary Todd (Kay Hammond), his heartbreaking decision to declare war upon the South, his pardoning of a condemned sentry during the Civil War, and his assassination at the hands of John Wilkes Booth (expansively portrayed by Ian Keith). This was D.W. Griffith's first talkie, and the master does his best with the somewhat pedantic dialogue sequences; but as always, Griffith's forte was spectacle and montage, as witness the cross-cut scenes of Yankees and Rebels marching off to war and the pulse-pounding ride of General Sheridan (Frank Campeau) through the Shenandoah Valley. Thanks to the wizardry of production designer William Cameron Menzies, many of the scenes appear far more elaborate than they really were; Menzies can also be credited with the unforgettable finale, as Honest Abe's Kentucky log cabin dissolves to the Lincoln Memorial. As Abraham Lincoln, Walter Huston is a tower of strength, making even the most florid of speeches sound human and credible; only during the protracted death scene of Ann Rutledge does Huston falter, and then the fault is as much Griffith's as his. Road-shown at nearly two hours (including a prologue showing slaves being brought to America), Abraham Lincoln was pared down to 97 minutes by United Artists, and in that length it proved a box-office success, boding well for D.W. Griffith's future in talkies (alas, it proved to be his next-to-last film; Griffith's final effort, The Struggle was a financial disaster). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Strictly Unconventional offers two subplots united by irony. British wife Elizabeth (Catherine Dale Owen), weary of her much older M.P. husband Clive (Lewis Stone), dreams of running off with her handsome Canadian lover Ted (Paul Cavanaugh). Hoping to vicariously experience her fantasy, Elizabeth invites her mother-in-law Lady Kitty (Alison Skipworth), who years earlier had stirred up a scandal by leaving her husband in favor of the dashing Lord Proteus (Ernest Torrence), for a weekend party. Our heroine is sorely disillusioned when Lady Kitty turns out to be a superficial old windbag desperately trying to recapture her past while Lord Proteus is likewise -- old, fat, and fatuous. Astonishingly, Elizabeth fails to profit by this example and runs off with her lover all the same -- but only after she is convinced that Ted is not and never will be a Lord Proteus. Strictly Unconventional is a cleaned-up adaptation of Somerset Maugham's The Circle. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Based on Zoë Akins's 1923 novel Déclassée and the 1925 film of the same title, Her Private Life stars Billie Dove as Lady Helen Haden, a married Englishwoman blackmailed after having a fling with American gambler Ned Thayer (Walter Pidgeon). When Sir Bruce Haden (Montagu Love) divorces her, Lady Helen travels to New York, where she is forced to pawn her jewels in order to survive. Although she still loves Thayer, she marries his wealthy boss, Rudolph Solomon (Holmes Herbert). The latter nobly steps aside, however, when he discovers that his own sister (Thelma Todd) actually committed a crime for which Thayer had taken the blame. Her Private Life, which featured the talking-picture debuts of both Dove and Walter Pidgeon, was also released in a silent version. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Tod Browning (Dracula, Freaks) directed this second film version of the Bayard Veiller play, which was his first collaboration with Bela Lugosi, whom he would launch to stardom two years later. Lugosi plays Inspector Delzante, who investigates a series of murders near a British mansion in Calcutta. The murders are pinned on a young runaway named Helen O'Neill (Leila Hyams) who is taken in by a well-intentioned fake Irish medium, Madame LaGrange (Margaret Wycherly). Delzante toys with the various characters in attendance and makes them reveal the real killer, and Lugosi is a lot of fun to watch. The film doesn't hold up to straight criticism very well -- the accents are particularly ludicrous, the Indian setting is totally unconvincing (and, in light of the short shrift it is given in the script, wholly unnecessary), and the acting is of the stiff, declamatory style so popular in the early days of sound. If one can accept these drawbacks and just enjoy the cast (Holmes Herbert, Conrad Nagel, even a young Joel McCrea), the film is quite entertaining. Those viewers whose familiarity with Lugosi is limited to his horror work and his sad decline under the tutelage of Edward D. Wood Jr. may be quite surprised at his screen presence here, which -- while undeniably hammy -- is nonetheless commanding and powerful. He doesn't really act so much as mesmerize. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide