André Luguet Movies

Metropolitan Opera diva Grace Moore made her film debut in MGM's A Lady's Morals. The film purports to be the biography of "Swedish Nightingale" Jenny Lind, who was ballyhooed to stardom by 19th-century showman P.T. Barnum (Wallace Beery, who'd re-create the role in 1934's The Mighty Barnum). Most of the story, however, is given over to the fabricated romance between Lind (Moore) and young composer Paul Brandt (Reginald Denny), who gives her up when stricken with blindness. As if this wasn't trouble enough, Lind loses her voice at the height of her career; she regains her golden throat, but Paul is lost to her forever. Grace Moore sings seven songs during the film's amazingly brief (75-minute) running time, two of them operatic classics. The anemic box-office showing of A Lady's Morals and her follow-up vehicles briefly squelched Grace Moore's hopes for film stardom, but a few years later she enjoyed enormous success in a series of Columbia musicals. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

His Glorious Night, the first talkie version of Ferenc Molnar's Olympia, is remembered today as the film that ruined John Gilbert. Legend has it that silent-screen-idol Gilbert's voice recorded so badly that audiences laughed out loud when he declared his love for Catherine Dale Owen, though this derision had more to do with his awful dialogue than his (minimal) vocal inadequacies. At any rate, the Molnar original was simultaneously filmed in a Spanish, German, and French-language version; the first two retained the title Olympia, while the French adaptation was titled Si L'Empereur Savait Ca (If The Emperor Only Knew). Andre Luguet steps into the John Gilbert role as Captain Kovacs, a dashing military officer in love with the beautiful daughter (Tania Fedor) of a high-born general (she was a Princess in the original, and she was played by Catherine Dale Owen). The girl's mother, who has slated her daughter to marry a Prince, breaks up the romance, whereupon Kovacs threatens to publicly impugn the heroine's reputation if he isn't permitted a night alone with her before the wedding. He gets what he wants, only to prove that he's really an honorable man after all. Both the French and German versions of Olympia were directed by Jacques Feyder; the property was remade in 1960 as A Breath of Scandal. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Also known as Lilac, this early Anatole Litvak-directed talkie was based on a play by Tristan Bernard and Charles Henry Hirsch. The story bears traces of the Bertold Brecht-Weill piece The Threepenny Opera, with heroine Lilac (Marcelle Romeo) consorting with the criminal scum of Paris. Lilac falls in love with a handsome detective (Andre Luguet), but he doesn't let his emotions stand in the way of his duty, and in the end he reluctantly turns her over to the authorities. At $120,000, Coeur de Lilas was one of the most expensive movies to come out of France in 1931, but it more than made back its cost at the box-office. Jean Gabin makes an early screen appearance as "The Tough." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

More of a follow-up than a sequel to 1931's popular Svengali, this drama centers on the attempts of a club-footed and insanely bitter dance instructor to cling to his protege. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Amour a L'Americaine (American Love) focuses on a Yankee millionairess, played by Gallic comedienne Spinelly. Jilted by her French lover, Spinelly heads to Paris in hopes of winning him back. She spots her errant Romeo in a night club, where he is entertaining a pretty young woman. Assuming that the woman is his wife, Spinelly does everything she can to break up the marriage. By the time she learns that he was never married at all, it hardly matters: like the Mounties, Spinelly has finally gotten her man. The music in Amour a L'Americaine was provided by world-renowned bandleader Ray Ventura, who appears onscreen at several junctures. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

James Cagney was originally pegged to play brash Broadway columnist Jimmy Russell in this pleasant if somewhat lightweight newspaper yarn, but when director William Wellman called "action," Douglas Fairbanks Jr. had replaced him. In love with pretty actress Mary Wodehouse (Frances Dee), Jimmy can only watch as gangster Eddie Shaw (Lyle Talbot) takes on the girl's mounting debt. Sending Jimmy on a wild goose chase to Atlantic City, Shaw then attempts to lure Mary to his penthouse but is instead confronted with the girl's gun-toting Aunt Hattie (Cecil Cunningham). Jimmy manages to escape Shaw's goons and arrives at Shaw's apartment just in time to watch Aunt Hattie hide the murder weapon. There is an attempt at a coverup, and the eventual ruling of the court reads suicide. The ambitious Mary, meanwhile, marries theatrical entrepreneur Max Boncour (André Luguet) and Jimmy vows to stay away from the "love racket" for good. Or at least until gal-pal Sally (Ann Dvorak) can convince him otherwise. Although George Raft is listed in most credits for Love is a Racket, he is not in the surviving print. The drama was retitled Such Things Happen for release in Great Britain, where the word "racket" meant something entirely different. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide