The Films 1930s
These are some of the films made in the 1930s which were shown at the Royalty.
Do you have any memories of films you went to see?
The Love Parade
The first film to be shown at the Royalty Cinema when it was opened on 20th October 1930.
The Love Parade is a 1929 American Pre-Code musical comedy film about the marital difficulties of Queen Louise of Sylvania (Jeanette MacDonald) and her consort, Count Alfred Renard (Maurice Chevalier). Despite his love for Louise and his promise to be an obedient husband, Count Alfred finds his role as a figurehead unbearable.
The film was directed by Ernst Lubitsch from a screenplay by Guy Bolton and Ernest Vajda, adapted from the French play Le Prince Consort, written by Jules Chancel and Leon Xanrof; which had previously been adapted for Broadway in 1905 by William Boosey and Cosmo Gordon Lennox.
The Love Parade is notable for being both the film debut of Jeanette MacDonald and the first "talkie" film made by Ernst Lubitsch. It was also released in a French-language version called Parade d'amour. Chevalier had thought that he would never be capable of acting as a Royal courtier, and had to be persuaded by Lubitsch. This huge box-office hit appeared just after the Wall Street crash, and did much to save the fortunes of Paramount.
MacDonald was born June 18, 1903, at her family's Philadelphia home at 5123 Arch Street. She was the youngest of the three daughters of Anna Mae (née Wright) and Daniel MacDonald. She had Scottish, English, and Dutch ancestry. Starting at an early age, she took dancing lessons with Al White, imitated her mother's opera records and took singing lessons with Wassil Leps. She performed at church and school functions and began touring in kiddie shows, heading Al White's "Six Little Song Birds" in Philadelphia at the age of nine. She was the younger sister of character actress Blossom Rock who is most famous as Grandmama on the TV show Addams Family.
Going Places
Going Places is a 1938 American musical comedy film directed by Ray Enright. Dick Powell plays a sporting goods salesman who is forced to pose as a famous horseman as part of his scheme to boost sales and gets entangled in his lies.
The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song for the song "Jeepers Creepers", premiered in this movie by Louis Armstrong, who sings it to a horse.
Ronald Reagan also featured in the film
Ambush
Ambush is a 1939 American drama film directed by Kurt
Neumann and written by Laura Perelman and S. J. Perelman. The film stars Gladys
Swarthout, Lloyd Nolan, William "Bill" Henry, William Frawley, Ernest
Truex and Broderick Crawford. The film was released on January 20, 1939, by
Paramount Pictures.
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Wells Fargo
Wells Fargo (1937) is an American Western film directed by
Frank Lloyd and starring Joel McCrea, Bob Burns and Frances Dee. This is the
third of four movies in which real life husband and wife McCrea and Dee starred
together.
It was nominated for an Academy Award in the category Best
Sound (Loren L. Ryder).