Mata Hari, The Animal Kingdom, Rasputin and the Empress

1932's Movies

In 1932 Garbo played the ill-fated international spy, Mata Hari, in the M-G-M picture of the same name. Ramon Novarro played opposite her.

Another play filmed in 1932 was Philip Barry's The Animal Kingdom. RKO made it, with Ann Harding and Leslie Howard in the leading roles.

Rasputin and the Empress brought together the three, Barrymores, John, Ethel, and Lionel. Richard Boleslavsky directed this famous trio for M-G-M in 1932.

Katharine Hepburn first attracted Hollywood's attention when, an unknown and virtually inexperienced actress, she scored an instantaneous hit in the stage version of The Warrior's Husband. Brought West, she disregarded all rules of the game, went about in overalls and a hired Rolls Royce, snubbed her fellow actors, sassed her director, refused to do the routine publicity stunts, made an all-round nuisance of herself--and made an immediate success in A Bill of Divorcement. RKO promptly starred her in Christopher Strong and then in Morning Glory, a scene from which is shown here, with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., as leading man. Hepburn received the Academy award for her performance in Morning Glory.

"Goodness, what beautiful diamonds!" exclaims one of the characters in Night After Night. To which Miss West remarks, "Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie." Miss West, after a tumultuous stage career as author, director, producer, and actress, in the course of which she managed to land a jail sentence, went on to triumph in her first picture, playing but a small part.

In 1932 came the film that reintroduced the musical craze, Forty-second Street. The acting was good, the direction swift, and the production numbers were lush. Lloyd Bacon directed for Warner Brothers.

Paul Muni has long been one of the most expert character actors on the screen. One of his early successes was I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, which Mervyn Le Roy directed in 1932. This Warner Brothers picture was also notable for handling a socially vital theme intelligently and movingly.

Warner Brothers also produced one of the screen's best love stories in 1932--One-Way Passage. William Powell and Kay Francis played the lovers, under Tay Garnett's sensitive direction.

One of the most ambitious productions of the year, M-G-M's adaptation of Vicki Baum's Grand Hotel, enlisted the talents of a group of Hollywood's biggest stars. Joan Crawford, as the stenographer, Wallace Beery, as the industrial magnate, and Lionel Barrymore, as the man who has only a few months left to live.