Voltaire, W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage

George Arliss added another celebrity to his list of characterizations with a picture entitled Voltaire. With him in this scene are Margaret Lindsay and Doris Kenyon. Frisco Jenny, starring Ruth Chatterton, was a story of mother love, with the San Francisco earthquake thrown in for good measure.

RKO's production of W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage, in 1934, starred Leslie Howard, but it made a star out of Bette Davis. As the scheming waitress, Miss Davis gave a memorable performance that established her as one of the most talented of the younger Hollywood actresses.

Richard Barthelmess forsook his customary romantic roles to play in a Western melodrama about Indians and the wrongs done them by unscrupulous government agents, Massacre.

In 1934 came the immortal It Happened One Night, directed by Frank Capra for Columbia. Its two romantic stars, Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable, turned in comic performances that won them Academy awards for the best performances by actress and actor. The picture itself won the award as the outstanding production of the year; Capra won the award for his direction; and Robert Riskin won the award for the year's best screen play.

Clarence Brown directed Chained for M-G-M in 1934. It featured a popular trio--Otto Kruger, Joan Crawford, and Clark Gable. Miss Harlow's untimely death in 1937 cut short an acting career of unusual promise.

Dashiell Hammett's detective novel, The Thin Man, was a leading best seller and, naturally, had most of the studios bidding for it. M-G-M finally got it and entrusted the film version to Myrna Loy and William Powell, with Hunt Stromberg producing and W. S. Van Dyke directing. Its instantaneous success, however, exceeded the wildest speculations of its sponsors. The idea of treating a murder mystery in terms of high comedy was fresh and appealed to a public that was weary of conventional whodunits. Moreover, to a movie audience that had been brought up to see marriage, in the films, an an ordeal, the sight of two ultra-smart, sophisticated people very much married and very much in love was reassuring and oddly moving.