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Gallant Lady  /  Ann Vickers

Gallant Lady
May 8, 2016 - 7:00 pm
Billy Wilder Theater
In-person: 
Emily Carman.

Gallant Lady  (1933)


Pathé’s most valuable “asset” when RKO acquired it in 1931, Ann Harding carved out a new career status as a “semi-independent” by leveraging competing offers to strengthen her position with her new bosses, while retaining options to make films outside RKO-Pathé.  One of those projects was this powerful and moving melodrama about a successful career woman who gets a second chance to raise the son she had to give up for adoption years before. 

35mm, b/w, 84 min.  Production: 20th Century Pictures, Inc.  Distribution: United Artists.  Producer: Darryl F. Zanuck.  Director: Gregory La Cava.  Screenwriter: Douglas Z. Doty, Gilbert Emery, Sam Mintz.  Cinematographer: Peverell Marley.  Editor: Barbara McLean.  Cast: Ann Harding, Clive Brook, Otto Kruger, Tullio Carminati, Dickie Moore.

Preserved by the Library of Congress

Ann Vickers  (1933)


A successful stage star when she signed with RKO in 1930, Irene Dunne insisted she be allowed to continue working on the stage between films.  Dunne’s artistic clout and star power—along with that of Walter Huston and Conrad Nagel—was crucial to RKO as it weathered the controversy around this adaptation of Sinclair Lewis’ novel about a woman’s crusade for social justice after she’s shunned for an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. 

35mm, b/w, 76 min.  Production: RKO Radio Pictures.  Distribution: RKO Radio Pictures.  Producer: Pandro S. Berman.  Director: John Cromwell.  Based on the novel by Sinclair Lewis.  Screenwriter: Jane Murfin.  Cinematographer: David Abel, Edward Cronjager.  Editor: George Nichols Jr.  Cast: Irene Dunne, Walter Huston, Conrad Nagel, Bruce Cabot, Edna May Oliver.

Part of: 
Independent Stardom on Screen: Freelance Women in Hollywood