The Last of Mrs. Cheyney is a 1929

1929 in film

-Events:The days of the silent film are numbered. A mad scramble to provide synchronized sound is on.*January 20 - The movie In Old Arizona is released. The film is the first full-length talking film to be filmed outdoors....

 American

Cinema of the United States

The cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...

 comedy film

Comedy film

Comedy film is a genre of film in which the main emphasis is on humour. They are designed to elicit laughter from the audience. Comedies are mostly light-hearted dramas and are made to amuse and entertain the audiences...

 directed by Sidney Franklin

Sidney Franklin (director)

Sidney Franklin was an American film director and producer. His brother Chester Franklin also became a director during the silent film era best known for helming the early Technicolor film Toll of the Sea....

. The screenplay by Hanns Kräly

Hanns Kräly

Hanns Kräly , credited in the United States as Hans Kraly, was a German actor and screenwriter. His main collaborations were with director Ernst Lubitsch, and they worked together on 30 films between 1915 and 1929....

 is based on the 1925 play of the same name by Frederick Lonsdale

Frederick Lonsdale

Frederick Lonsdale was an English dramatist.-Personal life:Lonsdale was born Lionel Frederick Leonard in St Helier, Jersey, the son of Susan and John Henry Leonard, a tobacconist. He began as a private soldier and worked for the London and South Western Railway...

. The film was remade twice, with the same title

The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1937 film)

The Last of Mrs. Cheyney is a 1937 drama/comedy motion picture starring Joan Crawford, William Powell, Robert Montgomery and Frank Morgan. The film tells the story of a chic jewel thief in England, who falls in love with one of her marks....

 in 1937 and as The Law and the Lady in 1951.

Plot

Resourceful and engaging Fay Cheyney, posing as a wealthy Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n widow at a Monte Carlo

Monte Carlo

Monte Carlo is an administrative area of the Principality of Monaco....

 hotel, befriends Mrs. Webley with the intention of stealing her pearl necklace, a plot devised by Charles, her butler and partner-in-crime. Complicating the situation are the romantic feelings she develops for Lord Arthur Dilling, Mrs. Webley's nephew. While taking the necklace during a party in the Webley home, Fay is caught by Arthur, who threatens to expose her unless she submits to him. Rather than compromise her principles, she confesses to her hostess, who plans to contact the police until Lord Elton, another guest, recalls Fay has a love letter he wrote her that could prove to be embarrassing to everyone present. They offer her money in exchange for the letter and her freedom, but when she destroys the letter and refuses their payment, they welcome her back into their social circle.

Cast

• Norma Shearer
  Norma Shearer
  Edith Norma Shearer was a Canadian-American actress. Shearer was one of the most popular actresses in North America from the mid-1920s through the 1930s...
  
   ..... Fay Cheyney
• Basil Rathbone
  Basil Rathbone
  Sir Basil Rathbone, KBE, MC, Kt was an English actor. He rose to prominence in England as a Shakespearean stage actor and went on to appear in over 70 films, primarily costume dramas, swashbucklers, and, occasionally, horror films...
  
   ..... Lord Arthur Dilling
• George Barraud ..... Charles
• Herbert Bunston
  Herbert Bunston
  Herbert Bunston was a British stage and screen actor. He is probably best remembered for his role as Dr. John Seward in the Broadway and film versions of Dracula....
  
   ..... Lord Elton
• Hedda Hopper
  Hedda Hopper
  Hedda Hopper was an American actress and gossip columnist, whose long-running feud with friend turned arch-rival Louella Parsons became at least as notorious as many of Hopper's columns.-Early life:...
  
   ..... Lady Maria
• Maude Turner Gordon
  Maude Turner Gordon
  Maude Turner Gordon .She was born in Franklin, Indiana, USA and died in Los Angeles, California. She was an American actress...
  
   ..... Mrs. Webley

Critical reception

Mordaunt Hall

Mordaunt Hall

Mordaunt Hall was the first regularly assigned motion picture critic for The New York Times, from October 1924 to September 1934....

 of the New York Times said, "It is a well-arranged picture, but nevertheless one in which it is not difficult to detect where Mr. Lonsdale left off and where the scenario writers tried their hand at dialogue . . . There are a number of interesting dramatic passages that are pictured with considerable cunning. The dialogue goes on for some time, and Sidney Franklin, the director, keeps his players busy, which is a relief after seeing talking screen images standing in the same spot until they have had their say."

Edwin Schallert of the Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

observed, "In the portrayals, Miss Shearer averaged well. She evidences a more precise expressiveness facially than she does vocally, and some of her very best scenes are in the silent ones. Nevertheless, she measures very well to the majority of the role’s requirements, the crispness of her voice being well suited to the repartee portions. She is exceedingly attractive in the role."

Awards and nominations

Hanns Kräly competed with himself for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and won for The Patriot

The Patriot (1928 film)

The Patriot is a 1928 semi-biographical film that was directed by Ernst Lubitsch and released by Paramount Pictures. The film was written by Hanns Kräly ; it is an adaptation of several different plays: Paul I by Dmitri Merezhkovsky, Der Patriot by Alfred Neumann, and The Patriot by Ashley Dukes...

.

External links