The Barretts of Wimpole Street, The New Moon

Metro brought Katharine Cornell's stage success, The Barretts of Wimpole Street, to the screen in 1934. Fredric March played the poet Browning, Norma Shearer, Elizabeth Barrett, and Charles Laughton, her father. Sidney Franklin handled the direction.
Jesse L. Lasky, producing for Fox, turned out an excellent screen version of John L. Balderston's play, Berkeley Square, directed by Frank Lloyd, with Leslie Howard playing the role he had created on the stage.

As has been noted, when Lawrence Tibbett and Grace Moore appeared together in The New Moon, Tibbett was an immediate success, while Miss Moore was not. Columbia cast her in a story about the operatic stage, One Night of Love, of which little was expected. The picture was an instant hit and made a star of Miss Moore. Tullio Carminati, shown in this scene with the star, also scored a success with his performance as her romantic singing teacher.

Madame Du Barry was an elaborate and lavish chronicle of the life and adventures of the famous courtesan, with Dolores Del Rio in the title role. Hollywood's first nights were world-famous, and the most spectacular of all occurred at Grauman's Chinese Theater, on Hollywood Boulevard.

The year 1935 saw the first feature-length picture to be made entirely in the newly developed threecolor technicolor process. This was Becky Sharp, a screen version of Thackeray's Vanity Fair, with Miriam Hopkins in the title role.

Marlene Dietrich appeared in The Devil Is a Woman, with the screen play by John Dos Passos, and it was not a success. This was the last picture of the Dietrich-von Sternberg combination made for Paramount.

One of the best pictures of the year was M-G-M's David Copperfield, produced by David Selznick. Under George Cukor's direction, it held strictly to the Dickens story, with admirable results. Frank Lawton played the grown-up David; Edna May Oliver, Betsey Trotwood; Lionel Barrymore, Mr. Peggotty; and Basil Rathbone, Mr. Murdstone. The child David was played by a newly discovered youngster of great talent, Freddie Bartholomew, while W. C. Fields contributed a fine portrait of Wilkins Micawber.