pre-Code
Pre-Code Hollywood was the brief era in the American film industry between the widespread adoption of sound in film in 1929LaSalle (2002), p. 1. and the enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code censorship guidelines, popularly known ...
romance film
Romance films or movies involve romantic love stories recorded in visual media for broadcast in theatres or on television that focus on passion, emotion, and the affectionate romantic involvement of the main characters. Typically their journey ...
talkie
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades passed before ...
. The film is based on the 1928 play ''Olympia'' by
Ferenc Molnár
Ferenc Molnár ( , ; born Ferenc Neumann; 12 January 18781 April 1952), often anglicized as Franz Molnar, was a Hungarian-born author, stage-director, dramatist, and poet, widely regarded as Hungary’s most celebrated and controversial play ...
.
''His Glorious Night'' has gained notoriety as the film that reputedly began the aging Gilbert's rapid career decline by revealing that he had a voice unsuitable for sound.
Plot
Although being engaged against her will with a wealthy man, Princess Orsolini (Catherine Dale Owen) is in love with Captain Kovacs (John Gilbert), a cavalry officer she is secretly meeting. Her mother Eugenie (Nance O'Neil), who has found out about the affair forces her to dump Kovacs and take part in the arranged marriage. Though not believing her own words, Orsolini reluctantly tells Kovacs she cannot ever fall in love with a man with his social position, being the son of a
peasant
A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasant ...
.
Feeling deeply hurt, Kovacs decides to take revenge by indulging in blackmail, spreading a rumor that he is an imposter and a swindler. The queen fears a scandal and invites herself over to his apartment to retrieve any proof of Orsolini and Kovacs' affair, including love letters. In the end, Kovacs agrees on remaining quiet by having Orsolini spend the night with him. True love is finally reconciled.
Catherine Dale Owen
Catherine Dale Owen (July 28, 1900 September 7, 1965) was an American stage and film actress.
Early life
Catherine Dale Owen was born in Louisville, Kentucky to a prominent Kentucky family. She attended private school in Philadelphia and Bron ...
as Princess Orsolini
*
Nance O'Neil
Gertrude Lamson (October 8, 1874 – February 7, 1965), known professionally as Nance O'Neil or Nancy O'Neil, was an American stage and film actress who performed in plays in various theaters around the world but worked predominantly in the Unite ...
as Eugenie
*
Gustav von Seyffertitz
Gustav von Seyffertitz (4 August 1862 – 25 December 1943) was a German film actor and director. He settled in the United States. He was born in Haimhausen, Bavaria, and died in Los Angeles, California, aged 81.
Biography
Gustav von Seyffertit ...
as Krehl
*
Hedda Hopper
Hedda Hopper (born Elda Furry; May 2, 1885February 1, 1966) was an American gossip columnist and actress. At the height of her influence in the 1940s, her readership was 35 million. A strong supporter of the House Un-American Activities Committ ...
as Mrs. Collingswood Stratton
* Doris Hill as Priscilla Stratton
* Tyrell Davis as Prince Luigi Caprilli
* Gerald Barry as Lord York
*Madeline Seymour as Lady York
*
Richard Carle
Richard Carle (born Charles Nicholas Carleton, July 7, 1871 – June 28, 1941) was an American stage and film actor as well as a playwright and stage director. He appeared in more than 130 films between 1915 and 1941.
Carle was born in Som ...
as Count Albert
*Eva Dennison as Countess Lina
*
Youcca Troubetzkov
Youcca Troubetzkoy (russian: Ю́рий Никола́евич Трубецко́й; 12 December 1905 – 22 April 1992), also credited as Youcca Troubetzkov and Nicolas Barclay, was an American actor.
He was a member of the princely Trubetskoy ...
as Von Bergman
*
Peter Gawthorne
Peter Gawthorne (1 September 1884 – 17 March 1962) was an Anglo-Irish actor, probably best known for his roles in the films of Will Hay and other popular British comedians of the 1930s and 1940s. Gawthorne was one of Britain's most called-upo ...
as General Ettingen
Production
Although ''His Glorious Night'' was John Gilbert's first sound film to be released, it was not his first "
talkie
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades passed before ...
". His earlier sound film, '' Redemption'', was "'temporarily shelved'" by MGM and not released until early April 1930, six months after the premiere of ''His Glorious Night''."Redemption (1930)" catalog, American Film Institute (AFI), Los Angeles, California. Retrieved October 18, 2019.
Reception and Gilbert's voice
The suggestion that Gilbert's vocal performance was so dreadful that it prompted laughter in the audience has long been held as an article of faith in the film world. That tale is thought to have inspired the fictitious film ''The Duelling Cavalier'', which is featured as a central plot element in the 1952 MGM musical comedy '' Singin' in the Rain''. In fact, while reviews of ''His Glorious Night'' ranged in 1929 from tepid to cautiously supportive, Gilbert himself received generally good notices and his voice was judged perfectly adequate, if somewhat studied in tone. "John Gilbert Makes a Big Hit in First Talkie", announces the review headline in the ''Chicago Daily Tribune'' on October 21.Tinee, Mae. "John Gilbert Makes a Big Hit in First Talkie", ''Chicago Daily Tribune'', October 21, 1929 p. 33. ProQuest Historical Newspapers (Ann Arbor, Michigan); subscription access through The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library. "Mr. Gilbert is a bit sound-conscious and over-ardent in the first few scenes", reports the newspaper, "but he whips himself into shape almost immediately and is oo lala as usual for the remainder of the picture." The ''Tribune'' then assures Gilbert's fans, "His voice is guaranteed to charm all listeners." In his assessment of Gilbert's performance, Edwin Schallert of the ''Los Angeles Times'' focused too on the actor's style of delivery and found no particular faults with the overall quality of his voice. "Gilbert", writes Schallert, "has not yet hit quite the perfect note on intonation for the microphone, but, barring a certain over-resonant delivery of lines, his enunciation is crisp and fine."
Harry Langdon
Harry Philmore Langdon (June 15, 1884 – December 22, 1944) was an American comedian who appeared in vaudeville, silent films (where he had his greatest fame), and talkies.Obituary ''Variety'', December 27, 1944, page 39.
Life and career
Bor ...
. His prowess at lovemaking, which has held the stenos breathless, takes on a comedy aspect, that gets the gum chewers tittering at first, then laughing outright at the very false ring of the couple of dozen 'I love you' phrases." Such reactions were attributed not to Gilbert's voice but specifically to
Willard Mack
Willard Mack (September 18, 1873 – November 18, 1934) was a Canadian-American actor, director, and playwright.
Life and career
He was born Charles Willard McLaughlin in Morrisburg, Ontario. At an early age his family moved to Brooklyn, New ...
's "overly florid dialogue, which might have been fine as subtitles but sounded downright embarrassing to audiences when spoken by a cast suffering from the stilted direction of a microphone-conscious Lionel Barrymore".
Rumors of sabotage
Some, including Gilbert's own daughter Leatrice Gilbert Fountain, have blamed MGM studio chief
Louis B. Mayer
Louis Burt Mayer (; born Lazar Meir; July 12, 1882 or 1884 or 1885 – October 29, 1957) was a Canadian-American film producer and co-founder of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios (MGM) in 1924. Under Mayer's management, MGM became the film industr ...
for deliberately perpetuating a rumor that Gilbert's voice was unsuitable for sound in order to drive out a star whom he judged to be too expensive, too cocky, and approaching his use-by date. Mayer and Gilbert undoubtedly shared a strong enmity, and according to rumors, Mayer knew that the script was substandard, and deliberately hired an out-of-condition Lionel Barrymore as the director.
As was common at the time, foreign-language versions of a film were not made by
dubbing
Dubbing (re-recording and mixing) is a post-production process used in filmmaking and video production, often in concert with sound design, in which additional or supplementary recordings are lip-synced and "mixed" with original production sou ...
; instead, scenes were reshot either with the original actors reading translations of their lines phonetically or by using other actors fluent in a specific language. In 1930, the French remake ''Si l'empereur savait ça'', Spanish remake ''Olimpia'' and German remake ''Olympia'' were released. All versions received notably better reviews.
MGM sold the film's rights to Paramount Pictures. A different film version, based on the original play rather than the 1929 movie, was produced as ''
A Breath of Scandal
''A Breath of Scandal'' (released as ''Olympia'' in Italy) is a 1960 American/Italian international co-production romantic comedy-drama film directed by Michael Curtiz, based on the stage play ''Olympia'' by Ferenc Molnár. It stars Sophia Lore ...