Box Office Poison: Katharine Hepburn

Out of all the stars labeled Box Office Poison by the Independent Theater Owners Association in 1938, Katharine Hepburn is one who maintains a high degree of name recognition today, even among people who aren’t actively interested in Hollywood history. Like John Barrymore, her name carries an aura of prestige in the acting world. Between stage, film, and television movies, her acting career spanned from 1928 to 1994. Over the course of her career, she won a record four Best Actress Academy Awards and earned eight additional nominations. Even if a person hasn’t seen any of her movies, they might know her from being played by Cate Blanchett in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator. Plus, her reputation for being independent and challenging societal norms makes her someone many people today can admire for that reason alone. But while her legacy has certainly held up very well over time, that success didn’t come overnight.

When you look at the early years of Katharine Hepburn’s career, both in film and on stage, you’ll see that she had a pattern of having some genuinely remarkable and promising achievements followed by some setbacks. For example, just weeks after graduating from Bryn Mawr in 1928, she was promoted from understudy to star in a stage production of The Big Pond, but was fired after one performance. She made her Broadway debut later in 1928, but the show closed after eight nights. Following a few years of moving between various theater companies with varying degrees of success, she had an opportunity to appear in the stage production of The Animal Kingdom in 1931 — but was fired after both Leslie Howard and playwright Phillip Barry were dissatisfied with her performance. Her big break didn’t come until 1932 when she was appearing on Broadway in a production of The Warrior’s Wife. The play only ran for a few months, but she got good reviews from theater critics and caught the attention of agent Leland Hayward, who thought she might be right for a project RKO Studios had in the works at the time: A Bill of Divorcement.

After seeing Hepburn in action during a screen test, director George Cukor saw something special in her. He thought she was unique and unusual, but in a good way. But when she was offered the part of Sydney in A Bill of Divorcement, she requested a weekly salary of $1,500 — a rather bold move for someone who was only just getting started in the theater world and had never appeared in a film before. For context, Jackie Cooper was earning $1,500 per week around this same time, when he had just had a wave of success in hits like Skippy and The Champ and had been nominated for an Oscar. (Adjusted for inflation, that $1,500 weekly salary would be about $32,000 per week in 2022.) David O. Selznick, the head of production at RKO at the time, didn’t share George Cukor’s enthusiasm for Katharine’s screen test. He had some reservations about whether or not she’d be a hit with audiences and knew that it’d be a big risk to have her in A Bill of Divorcement, but she got the job.

In 1932’s A Bill of Divorcement, Katharine Hepburn made her film debut in a significant role alongside established stars John Barrymore and Billie Burke and it proved to be a “Star is Born” moment for Katharine. Not only was the movie a hit, she was quickly labeled an up-and-coming star to watch. Looking back at some of the original reviews for A Bill of Divorcement, it seems that it helped people see the same unique quality George Cukor saw when he first watched her screen test. In the November 1932 issue of Photoplay magazine, their (slightly backhanded) review said of her performance:

“Not since Greta Garbo first flashed before audiences in The Torrent has anything happened like this Katharine Hepburn. This girl from the New York stage is not only a fine actress — she is a great personality. Not beautiful, measured by Hollywood standards, she has something more than beauty — that thing, whatever it is, makes the great, great.”

A review of the film published in The National Board of Review in November 1932 said of her performance:

“A young and new actress, Katharine Hepburn, has the luck to have been given the part of the daughter for her first appearance in films, and the gift to make that part glow with life and beauty, a life and beauty that does not come from mere appearance but from the direct projection of an inner nature.”

The risk David O. Selznick took on Katharine Hepburn seemingly paid off and she was offered a contract with RKO. However, perhaps nobody was more surprised by the success of A Bill of Divorcement and the acclaim for her performance than Katharine Hepburn herself. She wasn’t satisfied with her performance in it and had gone off to Europe after production wrapped, convinced her career in Hollywood was over. Instead, the momentum from A Bill of Divorcement carried her into 1933, which turned out to be a banner year for her career. Over the course of 1933, she was in Morning Glory, for which she won her first Oscar, and Little Women, which was one of Katharine’s personal favorite performances of her career. She also had Christopher Strong, which wasn’t a runaway hit at the box office, but she got good notices. But as she went into 1934, that pattern of “impressive achievements followed by setbacks” started to reemerge.

In 1934, Katharine Hepburn had a hard time catching a break professionally. Film-wise, she appeared in Spitfire, which turned a profit, but is generally regarded to be one of the worst movies of her career. There was also The Little Minister, which fell into the category of being too expensive to be profitable. She also appeared in a stage production of The Lake, which turned out to be enough of a fiasco that Katharine personally paid for the show to close rather than endure the humiliation of staying on with a show that was getting panned by the critics. (The Lake was the play which famously inspired Dorothy Parker to say of Hepburn’s performance, “She runs the gamut of emotions all the way from A to B.”)

By 1935, she had another moment of success with Alice Adams, which was profitable and earned her another Best Actress Oscar nomination. However, that Academy Awards ceremony was the year after the infamous controversy around Bette Davis being snubbed for Of Human Bondage. So when Bette won for Dangerous, it was generally accepted that the Academy was making up for Of Human Bondage and even Bette Davis is quoted as saying that she thought Katharine Hepburn deserved to win that year. Alice Adams would be Katharine’s last notable career success for a while, but some of the movies she appeared in between late 1935 and 1938 would eventually go on to be seen as some of the most interesting films of her career.

On December 25, 1935, Sylvia Scarlett was released and was the first in a string of significant box office failures Katharine Hepburn starred in. Today, Sylvia Scarlett is notable for a few other reasons, though. First of all, it was the first on-screen pairing of Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. It was also another teaming of Katharine Hepburn and director George Cukor, who had helped give her that first big break in Hollywood and was someone she would successfully work with several more times. It’s also often discussed in regards to its LGBTQ themes. However, it’s a movie that audiences of 1935 perhaps weren’t quite ready for. Reviews from its initial release were a mixed bag. Many critics described it as being confused and muddled and criticized the adaptation from its source material. There were some positive reviews for both Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. But there were many critics who hated the movie in general. Here is a selection of reviews featured in the Motion Picture Review Digest:

“Sylvia Scarlett [is] an amateur movie as embarrassing as the ideas indulged in by Uncle Charlie when he dons Aunt Martha’s hat at Aunt Ida’s birthday party. I finally had to walk out on Sylvia Scarlett for a breath of Sixth Avenue monoxide…The whole picture is a case of bad judgment on the part of everyone concerned.” – Time

“I am forced to say that her vehicle is a sprawling and ineffective essay in dramatic chaos, with characters and situations enmeshed in vague obscurities, but for Miss Hepburn’s performance I have only admiration. The photoplay itself is a rather futile oddity, but the eerie suggestion of oddness that goes with the star’s characteristic type of impersonation fits in far more successfully with this sort of tale than it ever did when she was attempting to be a small-town wallflower in ‘Alice Adams.’ I don’t care for ‘Sylvia Scarlett’ a bit, but I do think Miss Hepburn is better in it than she was as the Booth Tarkington heroine.” – NY Herald Tribune

“Except for the excellent people in it, and especially the beautiful and talented Katharine Hepburn, who animates the title role with a vibrant and compelling performance, there is very little to recommend in the [film].” – NY World-Telegram

“As the awkward, imaginative, tremulously frustrated heroine of the tale, Miss Hepburn is on her home grounds, and she plays the part with a richness of understanding that compares favorably with her performance in ‘Alice Adams.’ Individual scenes of laughter and heartbreak come through cleanly, but the story and its people seem purposeless and possess the blurred out lines of shapes that are being projected through a veil.” – New York Times

Sylvia Scarlett lost $363,000. In 1936, Katharine Hepburn only appeared in two movies: Mary of Scotland and A Woman Rebels. Neither of them were hits at the box office. Mary of Scotland lost $165,000 and A Woman Rebels lost $222,000. 1937’s Quality Street didn’t fare much better and lost $248,000.

At this point, Katharine Hepburn was facing two major problems. First, there were the films themselves. RKO largely misjudged what types of films would work best for her sensibilities. Little Women was a hit, but more historical dramas were not necessarily what audiences wanted to see her in. Today’s movie audiences have the benefit of understanding that a large part of Katharine Hepburn’s enduring appeal comes from her distinctly modern attitudes, so movies like Mary of Scotland simply weren’t the best showcase for her talents. The second problem was her relationship with the media and her image with the general public.

When Katharine Hepburn first came to Hollywood, she wasted absolutely no time in shaping that very distinctly Katharine Hepburn image that she remains defined by. Right off the bat, she avoided doing interviews and other publicity events and it didn’t take long for reporters to start losing their patience. A Bill of Divorcement was released in November 1932 and by December 1933, Screenland magazine was already frustrated enough with her that they published an open letter from the editor berating her for not being more media friendly. In this letter, the editor of Screenland criticizes her for stealing Garbo’s anti-publicity schtick, saying it has never been modern. Other highlights of that letter include:

“So you see, you have a responsibility of a sort. And it isn’t American to put your hand in front of your face when the cameras are aiming at you. Not at all. The only Americans who do that are public enemies. Our public idols, on the other hand, including our Presidents, put up with it. Mellon and Morgan stand for it…It may be a bore, but it’s a part of their business and they know it and they do it. Suppose you see if you can grin and bear it.”

“…And now, when the camera boys surround you because you’re a big name and they have a living to make, you cover the famous features with a disdainful gloved hand and let them make the most of it.”

“Oh, now. Can’t you be human? Can’t you be real? Must the ‘regular’ Katharine Hepburn from Hartford, Connecticut become merely a bored celebrity? For one thing, it’s too early in the game to be like that. You’ve made a sensational screen success, second to Garbo’s. But you’ve also had some great breaks. RKO, with wonderful wisdom, about-faced on your films after your second, ‘Christopher Strong,’ with the splendidly appealing ‘Morning Glory’ and now the great Jo role in ‘Little Women.’ I hope RKO will always be that wise. But it’s the test of time and good pictures that makes a really great star. The Hepburn-conscious public must be won not once but over and over again. Hepburn, the actress, can do it…But it’s Hepburn the girl who must pass critical muster of the personality-mad public.”

With A Bill of Divorcement being such a success, people were eager to know more about this new star. But since she wasn’t playing into the traditional movie star media system, she was something of an enigma to the public. Some of the information journalists were getting was contradictory. Many articles about her early days in Hollywood talk about her unusual style of dressing. There were rumors she was the heiress to a $16 million fortune. She created buzz for buying a used car rather than a brand new one. (She explained to Movie Classic magazine in a May 1933 interview, “I have no false pride about driving a second-hand automobile; rather I’m proud of having struck a good bargain.”) Her marriage to Ludlow Ogden Smith, which she had been trying to keep quiet, was a curiosity unto itself. She hardly shared Joan Crawford’s enthusiasm for responding to fan mail and signing autographs. 

On top of all that, there were often articles describing her as being rude, aloof, or generally difficult to work with. In September 1934, Picture Play magazine published an article titled “Hartford Resents Hepburn!” which accused her of being too aristocratic and out of touch to even win over the residents of her hometown. In January 1935, Hollywood magazine ran an article titled “Spitfire Hepburn Reforms,” describing her as having turned over a new leaf and how she had gone from being the bane of the RKO publicity department to being very cooperative for promotion of The Little Minister. By August 1937, there was enough Katharine Hepburn controversy for Picturegoer Weekly to publish a detailed timeline of her shaky relationship with the media, not unlike the articles you might see today breaking down timelines of drama around the movie Don’t Worry, Darling.

Between the bad press and the string of box office failures, it was clear in 1937 that something had to change in Katharine Hepburn’s career and Stage Door was a step in the right direction. Stage Door was only a modest success financially, but it was well received and gave Katharine a chance to get away from costume dramas and into a well-written drama with an excellent ensemble cast. (Plus the popularity of Ginger Rogers to help bolster its box office appeal.)

Looking back at Katharine’s run of Stage Door and 1938’s Bringing Up Baby, it’s easy to see this as a golden streak. But while Stage Door did respectably well, Bringing Up Baby was a different matter. Bringing Up Baby is one of the most notable examples of a classic film that wasn’t a huge hit when it was first released. Today, it’s a quintessential screwball comedy. But when it was released in February 1938, it was a movie that got some pretty respectable reviews, but didn’t perform as expected at the box office. One review published in Variety said of it:

“It completely ignores anything smacking of sophistication. It doesn’t even pretend to be witty. It just dishes out plain, boisterous comedy of a brand calculated to hit the greatest number of customers in the midriff. And it will hit them for plenty of box office. At the same time, Bringing Up Baby will be rated one of the distinctive entries of the season in this classification — the most frantic and whirligig of recent film funnies.”

Variety also said of Brining Up Baby in a separate review:

“Picture is moulded along same lines [as ‘Awful Truth’] and is definite box office. ‘Bringing Up Baby’ is constructed for maximum laughs. There is little rhyme or reason for most of the action, but it’s all highly palatable…Under Howard Hawks’ skillful pacing it is a hilarious farce.”

A critic for the New Yorker wrote:

“Little did I ever dream that in a Hepburn picture there would be such a flibbertigibbety farce as that of the lady whose skirt is ripped from her in a restaurant, but Miss Hepburn adds charm to the informal predicament and never has seemed so good natured.”

Newsweek also called it an “above average contender for crackpot-comedy sweepstakes,” praising the direction from Howard Hawks and Katharine Hepburn’s first farcical performance, while also noting the movie tries too hard for laughs at times. A selection of comments from theater owners published in the June 4, 1938 issue of Motion Picture Herald are also generally positive toward Bringing Up Baby and Hepburn’s performance in it. Even the most critical of the theater owner comments featured in that issue still called Bringing Up Baby better than most other screwball comedies coming out of Hollywood at the time, but blamed its disappointing performance on audiences losing interest in that style of comedy.

Despite the generally good reviews for the movie and for Hepburn, Bringing Up Baby didn’t become profitable until it was reissued for a second theatrical run in 1940. It was the last Katharine Hepburn movie released before the infamous Box Office Poison ad was published by the Independent Theater Owners Association. While RKO had been trying to revive interest in Katharine Hepburn, she didn’t feel confident in her future at RKO and opted to buy out the remainder of her contract. The underperformance of Bringing Up Baby also had some collateral damage for Howard Hawks, who lost out on the chance to direct 1939’s Gunga Din because of those box office returns.

Katharine’s second movie of 1938, Holiday, was released by Columbia and was another chance for her to work with both Cary Grant and George Cukor. Today, adding Holiday to that run of Stage Door and Bringing Up Baby makes 1937-1938 look like a true high point of her career. Many actors would love to have a run of movies like that in their careers. Holiday is now frequently cited as one of Katharine Hepburn’s best movies and firmly established as a comedy classic. But, as was the case for Bringing Up Baby, Holiday was generally well reviewed by critics, but struggled to make a mark with audiences. Reviews from newspapers and trade papers featured in the June 27, 1938 issue of the Motion Picture Review Digest were more positive, overall, about Holiday than they were for Bringing Up Baby but a selection of theater owner comments from the September 17, 1938 Motion Picture Herald mostly amount to one main sentiment: audiences just weren’t into it.

With the disappointing performance of Holiday, Katharine started to take matters into her own hands. She left Hollywood and started setting the stage, quite literally, for what would go on to become one of the biggest comebacks in Hollywood history. Playwright Phillip Barry had written The Philadelphia Story specifically with Katharine Hepburn in mind and the play proved to be exactly what her career needed. The Philadelphia Story opened on Broadway on March 28, 1939 and became a major success. Naturally, it was only a matter of time before movie studios were interested in doing a film version of the stage hit. At the time, Katharine had been seeing Howard Hughes and he realized how important it would be for her to hold the film rights to the play. He purchased the rights to The Philadelphia Story and gave them to her as a gift, putting her in the position to return to Hollywood on her own terms. She ended up selling the film rights to MGM, where she was able to choose her costars, director, and screenwriter, in addition to starring in it herself.

The Philadelphia Story was a big financial and critical success for MGM, earning a profit of $1,272,000 and six Academy Award nominations. Katharine was nominated for Best Actress, but lost to her Stage Door co-star Ginger Rogers. Jimmy Stewart and Donald Ogden Stewart respectively won for Best Actor and Best Screenplay. The movie also earned a Best Picture nomination and a Best Director nomination for George Cukor. Over the years, The Philadelphia Story became an established classic of the romantic comedy genre, being added to the National Film Registry in 1995 and included on several Top 100 movie lists released by the American Film Institute. The release of The Philadelphia Story also successfully started a new chapter in Hepburn’s film career at MGM, where, most notably, she began her relationship with Spencer Tracy. 

Box Office Poison: Kay Francis

When you hear the words “the queen of Warner Brothers,” who is the first person you think of? For many people, the answer is probably going to be Bette Davis. After all, she starred in several of the studio’s most prestigious films, like Dark Victory; Now, Voyager; and The Letter, just to name a few, so it certainly wouldn’t be an undeserved title. Over time, she became so closely associated with Warners that she was nicknamed “the fifth Warner brother.” But before Bette Davis, there was Kay Francis.

While Bette Davis was trying to make a name for herself in movies like Parachute Jumper and Fashions of 1934, Kay Francis had been starring in pre-Code classics like Jewel Robbery, Man Wanted, and One Way Passage for Warners, as well as Trouble and Paradise and Girls About Town at Paramount. She signed her first contract with Warner Brothers in 1932 when they offered her a better deal than Paramount was offering her.

By 1935, Kay Francis had reached the peak of her career at Warners when she officially became the highest paid star at the studio, receiving a salary of $4,000 per week and a lavish new dressing room. Following the success of I Found Stella Parish, she was given a new three-year contract with Warner Brothers even though her contract wasn’t up yet. Louella Parsons reported that this new contract was Jack Warner’s way of rewarding her for her cooperative nature and for never turning down a script offered to her. This new contract bumped her salary up to $5,250 per week.

Even though things were going extremely well for Kay at Warner Brothers at this point, she had lofty ambitions for where she wanted her career to go next. She aspired to work with Charles Laughton. Notably, she was interested in playing Edith Cortright in Dodsworth, but the part went to Mary Astor instead when Warners refused to loan her out. She was also interested in starring in adaptations of Tristan and Isolde and of Mildred Cram’s novel Forever, the latter of which fell through when it was discovered that Norma Shearer already owned the rights to it. Kay was even involved in the early stages of forming a studio similar to United Artists along with Richard Barthelmess, Clive Brook, and Ronald Colman, which also never came to fruition.

All was seemingly going well for Kay Francis — and then The White Angel came along. The Story of Louis Pasteur had been a big hit for Warner Brothers, so they decided to ride their own success by producing The White Angel with Kay Francis starring as Florence Nightingale. Not only was there pressure to live up to the success of The Story of Louis Pasteur, being given the chance to play a historical figure was an opportunity for Kay to move past her image as a fashionable glamour queen. But while Kay’s performance received many good notes, and a compilation of reviews featured in the Motion Picture Review Digest largely ranged from very positive to average-but-not bad, the movie as a whole didn’t make the impression Warner Brothers was hoping for. While The Story of Louis Pasteur earned two Academy Award wins for its writing (Best Writing – Original Story and Best Writing – Screenplay), The White Angel didn’t have the strong foundation that Pasteur‘s screenplay offered.

When Kay first read the script for The White Angel, she recorded her reaction in her diary: “Read my new script — dear God!” You might not expect that a biopic of Florence Nightingale would be particularly controversial, but getting approval from all the necessary parties proved to be surprisingly difficult. First of all, a key part of the movie was supposed to feature Florence Nightingale being presented to Queen Victoria. But when the production was denied permission to depict Queen Victoria in the movie, the reworked scene lacked the same dramatic punch as the original version would have had. The Breen office also took issue with scenes depicting brutality, which is highly restrictive when trying to tell the story of a woman providing care to soldiers wounded in a brutal war. One scene involving an amputation had to be cut.

The timing of the release of The White Angel also didn’t work to the movie’s advantage. A movie like The White Angel could have potentially benefitted from people seeing it for school assignments, as was the case for Romeo and Juliet with Norma Shearer and Leslie Howard. Unfortunately, The White Angel was released in late June 1936, after the school year had ended. Kay later said she regretted making The White Angel and producer Hal Wallis noted it was a box office disappointment.

The White Angel was followed by 1936’s Give Me Your Heart, which was a more typical Kay Francis movie and was more successful financially than The White Angel. Of course, Jack Warner decided this meant that Kay should stick to her usual fare: movies full of glamour and melodrama. Give Me Your Heart was followed by 1937’s Stolen Holiday and Another Dawn. In her diary, she said of Stolen Holiday, “Script from studio — BAD! Too sweet — old hat.” Considering all the ideas Kay had for her career, getting stuck in the same old types of roles over and over was very disappointing.

Another Dawn is an interesting movie in the sense that a lot of key people involved with it didn’t particularly want to be involved. Warners had originally planned the movie for Bette Davis, who got placed on suspension after refusing to do it, which is how it ended up going to Kay Francis. Kay seemed utterly bored by her role and said of it, “I don’t do much in it. Things just happen to me. I am just a wife who has been unfortunate in love, as usual.” Errol Flynn didn’t really want to do the movie, either. Director William Dieterle only did the movie as a favor to Hal Wallis.

Reviews for Another Dawn were, at best, mediocre. Generally, critics thought the writing was weak and the premise was trite. A critic for the New York Times said of it:

“Not since the fabled phoenix has the Arabian desert blossomed into anything quite so stunning as Kay Francis and her extensive wardrobe in ‘Another Dawn.’ Too often, however, has it, or its romantic Hollywood substitute, beheld the the familiar triangular plot…The picture is not entirely without merit, of course. Herbert Mundin is in it, and the California sand dunes have rarely, if ever, been photographed more beautifully.”

Warner Brothers had wanted Another Dawn to be a special production, so “nice sand dunes” was hardly the reaction the studio was hoping for.

1937’s Confession has undergone a critical re-evaluation over the years and has become popular among Kay’s modern day fans, but its initial reviews were somewhat mixed. Many critics thought it was Kay’s best movie in a while, but also thought the plot was a rehash of other Hollywood melodramas. By now, Kay was fed up with all the melodramatic roles and welcomed the comedic change of pace that First Lady (1937) offered. Unfortunately, First Lady was mostly well regarded for its writing and for Verree Teasdale, but Kay’s performance got some good notes from Variety and Hedda Hopper.

However, before audiences even had a chance to see First Lady, a career-altering event for Kay was happening behind the scenes. During her most recent round of contract negotiations, she had a very specific project in mind: starring in Tovarich alongside Charles Boyer and with Anatole Litvak directing. She felt strongly enough about it that she considered being able to do Tovarich a key condition of accepting this contract. Given the quality of material she had been recently been given to work with, she felt that Tovarich would be a surefire way to give her career a shot in the arm. When Warners announced that Claudette Colbert, on loan from Paramount, would be starring in Tovarich instead, Kay was angry enough to file a lawsuit to get out of her contract.

News of Kay’s lawsuit may have been surprising to many because, while some people found her cold and aloof, she wasn’t exactly known for being a diva, either. Remember how Jack Warner voluntarily gave her a new contract in 1935 as a reward for always accepting projects offered to her? The House on 56th Street and Mandalay were both rejected by Ruth Chatterton before Kay took them on without objection. When it came to work, she was extremely professional. She was punctual and always tried to keep her personal and professional lives separate. She was very reliable and had a nine-year streak of not calling out for even a single day off, which lasted until the production of Confession. There are many stories about her being generous and kind to others at the studio, at times rejecting special treatment on the set if it wasn’t also being given to extras. Of course, there were some disputes during productions, but Kay would often come back to smooth things over after calming down. In her personal life, she was known for leading a surprisingly modest lifestyle for a big movie star and didn’t even get a nice car for herself until 1937 — and even then, she preferred driving herself to hiring a chauffeur.

Filing a lawsuit wasn’t even Kay’s first line of action. She tried resolving the problem out of court, but was forced to go to court on September 3, 1937 when Warners refused to budge. In her suit, she accused Warner Brothers of putting her, “in pictures of inferior quality and putting her name in a special interstudio register which kept other studios from bidding for her services.” So not only was she prevented from doing Tovarich, she clearly hadn’t forgotten her disappointment of not being loaned out for Dodsworth.

Bette Davis before her court hearing.

Her case had some common ground with other lawsuits that had already been filed against Warner Brothers by James Cagney and Bette Davis. In all cases, pursuing those legal disputes was very risky for the stars involved. Bette Davis didn’t win her case, but she still got the better roles she wanted. On the other hand, James Cagney did win his case and his contract with Warner Brothers was nullified in 1936. However, other major studios weren’t willing to work with him because they’d be in a tough spot if Warner Brothers succeeded in getting the ruling overturned. This led to Cagney making two movies for the independent studio Grand National, both of which lost money. Cagney later returned to Warner Brothers in 1938 with better contract terms.

These types of legal disputes also had the potential for damaging the star’s reputation with the public. Both Cagney and Davis faced their share of slings from the media during their disputes. In Bette’s case, some tried to paint her as ungrateful and money hungry. But in a letter to Jack Warner written by Bette on June 21, 1936, months before her day in court, she talks about wanting a loan out clause in her contract and vacation time, and even offers to accept less pay if her terms were agreed to. (This letter is available to read on Stars and Letters, but doesn’t talk about her wanting better roles at Warner Brothers, which was another big part of her case.)

With Kay’s status as being a top-paid star, she certainly faced the risk of also being labeled money hungry. But similar to Greta Garbo, Kay Francis wasn’t a big fan of dealing with the media. Kay tolerated it more than Garbo, but she had her limits and valued her privacy. Unfortunately, this meant that some publications seemed to already be losing their patience with Kay even before her trial and were eager to cite specific examples of what they deemed bad behavior. In the July 3, 1937 issue of Picturegoer, there is a letter from the editor dedicated to Kay Francis, chiding her over reports of becoming too temperamental. These issues include a vague mention of trouble while filming 1934’s Wonder Bar, having a reporter thrown out of a party she hosted at a restaurant, not being attentive enough to British press on a trip to England, and arguing with director Joe May about dialogue in Confession. The letter also essentially blames her for the state of her career at that point, as if she controlled the projects she was given:

It seems very likely that nobody wanted to see a revival of the charming and sophisticated Kay Francis of One Way Passage and Trouble in Paradise more than Kay Francis.

Picturegoer ran another article about Kay Francis in their October 2, 1937 issue which opens under the pretense of being sympathetic, reminding people of her reputation for being highly cooperative with Warner Brothers, before citing some brief examples of “artistic temperament” during the productions of The White Angel (which they erroneously call The White Sister) and Confession before airing some grievances about Kay’s relationship with the press:

“It is particularly unfortunate that, amid her other troubles, Kay is not on the best terms with the Hollywood writers and is not getting a sympathetic press at a time that she needs it. She has never liked being interviewed, but until recently managed to maintain particularly friendly relations with the reporters.

The trouble all started when Kay gave a party some time ago. She lives in an extremely modest little house, and when she entertains on on any scale she does so in one of the larger Hollywood restaurants. On this occasion, a reporter gate-crashed.

No one likes to have her party gate-crashed, but Kay might have handled the situation more tactfully. She had the intruder ejected.

Her press vendetta has moreover been intensified by her friendship with Delmar Daves, a screenwriter she met during the making of The White Sister, and with whom her name has been linked in the romance rumors.

Kay has always felt that her marriage to Kenneth McKenna might have stood a better chance if it had not been for all the publicity that surrounded it from the outset, and she has openly resented press interest in her new romance.”

(One can’t help but wonder if the reporter who crashed Kay’s party worked for Picturegoer since they sure seemed salty about that incident.)

Not much is known about what, exactly, went on during Kay’s trial. What we do know is that, rather than having her contract nullified as Kay initially wanted, it was decided that Kay would finish out her contract at Warner Brothers. The official explanation was simply that Kay and Warner Brothers had reached an amicable agreement. Even other people who worked at Warner Brothers were rather baffled by the outcome and weren’t quite clear about what happened. Decades later, Bette Davis said of it:

“Out of the blue, it was announced she would complete her contract by starring in B-pictures! It was simply unprecedented and no reason was ever given. A huge embarrassment for such a star — she had many, many fans…Jack Warner was despicable to Miss Francis. I felt awfully sorry for her, and it certainly scared every actress in town. She said what she had to: that she was looking forward to retiring. Or, at least, taking some time off after working so hard. No one dared question her explanation, but it was known.”

Regardless of what exactly went on in the courtroom during Kay’s trial, her relationship with Warner Brothers was irreparably damaged and the agreement seems to have been anything but amicable. Jack Warner set out on a mission to make Kay miserable enough to break her contract so that the studio could sever their ties with her. But Kay refused to take the bait and continued to collect her big paychecks until her contract ended in September 1938.

Despite the quality of her recent movies, Kay was still considered a popular star among moviegoers. But despite her lasting popularity, Jack Warner insisted on putting her in what he considered the worst, most demeaning projects possible. First up was 1938’s Women are Like That, which was not particularly well received.

“The plot lacks both dramatic continuity and point. The mood wavers between connubial romance and connubial ruckus, without ever becoming persuasive.” – New York Herald Tribune

“It represents a courageous attempt to explain in the protracted seventy-very-odd minutes at its disposal certain aspects of a human problem which has baffled philosophers through the ages…There is only one question I must ask the authors of Women are Like That. It is, “Like what?” – New York Times

“Women are like that; so probably a good proportion of upper middle class women will like the extremely dull story, pseudo-intelligent dialogue, the romance between middle aged Francis, middle aged O’Brien. It is a woman’s picture for a comparatively small proportion of women at that. Estimate: weak programmer.” – Philadelphia Exhibitor

Some media outlets were also still taking jabs at Kay’s behavior. In an article titled “Kay and Pat are Like That!”, which ran in the January 1938 issue of Screenland, the writer does talk about the warm, friendly side to Kay, but it comes after the writer spends a considerable amount of time making heavy-handed efforts to paint Kay in a bad light while building up Pat O’Brien as the nice, easygoing good guy. After talking about how Kay filed her lawsuit after not getting to do Tovarich, they talked about how Pat O’Brien ended up doing Women Are Like That after rejecting another project:

“And it seems that Pat O’Brien was scheduled to go into Swing Your Lady but he didn’t like the script (neither did Joan Blondell who walked right off the set and took a course in hula dancing), and Pat didn’t want to pile up another suspension so he said holy mackerel and jumping catfish, haven’t you got something else around here I can do?”

Other highlights from that article include:

“A suing actress isn’t the most sociable person in the world — instead of the customary one chip she has the whole block on her shoulder — she is utterly convinced that the studio is trying to ruin her, so why should she be pleasant to anyone? The boys and girls from the publicity department hang an imaginary ‘Small-pox’ sign over the door of the stage and keep as far away as possible. Little people like you and me run like mad in the opposite direction. A suing star, it seems, has all the delightful charm of a coiled cobra.”

“On the set, she is slightly aloof, even when not suing, and doesn’t like to have crowds of tourists gaping at her when she is doing her scenes, or interviewers hanging around waiting to ask if she is going to marry Delmar Daves. On the other hand, Pat O’Brien, a cordial good-natured Irishman, and as natural as the day is long, likes nothing better than having mobs of people watching him act — in fact he and Humphrey Bogart even act better, if that is possible, when they have an admiring audience — and he doesn’t care what an interviewer asks him because his life is an open book. When Pat first started working at Warners, a guy asked him, ‘Mr. O’Brien, do you want your sets closed or not?’ To which our Mr. O’Brien replied, ‘If you want to tear down the sides of the stage and put in grandstands it’s all right with me.'”

Warners hit the mark in demeaning Kay by making her do Women Are Like That, but following it up with 1938’s My Bill ended up backfiring by being more successful than expected. Secrets of an Actress and Comet Over Broadway, also released in 1938, both failed to make an impression with critics and audiences. Comet Over Broadway is notable for being another movie that Kay Francis starred in after Bette Davis refused to do it. Bette called it, “the first nothing script I was given since my court battle in England,” and claimed that she was sick but would have made an effort for better material.

Comet Over Broadway wasn’t the last time the careers of Kay Francis and Bette Davis would overlap. After Bette was put on suspension for refusing to do Comet Over Broadway, she was assigned 1938’s The Sisters, a movie that had been planned for Kay. Kay had expressed an interest in doing 1939’s Juarez, but it ended up going to — who else — Bette Davis. Prior to her lawsuit, Kay had been considered for Dark Victory, and she was interested in the doing the movie, but Jack Warner made sure the part went to Bette.

When Kay Francis was included in the Box Office Poison ad published in 1938, nobody was probably less surprised than Kay. This was exactly the sort of thing Jack Warner had been hoping for post-lawsuit and even in the few years leading up to the ad’s publication, she had no delusions about the quality of scripts she had been receiving.

In addition to assigning her the worst projects possible, Warners continued punishing Kay Francis behind the scenes. Her nice, big dressing room had been reassigned to John Garfield and, subsequently, to Bette Davis. When she wasn’t busy working on set, the studio had her do screen tests with young actors the studio was considering working with. Not only was this the kind of thing that would’ve been considered way beneath the pay grade of someone like Kay Francis, a lot of stars of her stature would consider it an insult to be asked to do it. But Kay still showed up every time and did those screen tests without complaint. Warners even resorted to doing completely petty things just to make her more miserable, like giving her call times that were several hours earlier than when she was actually needed on set and denying her lunch pass requests so that she couldn’t eat with friends in the studio commissary. But she was determined to ride her contract out to the very bitter end, as she said, “even if they put me in a bathing suit and have me walk up and down Hollywood Boulevard!”

Many other Warner Brothers employees were quietly sympathetic to Kay’s situation. The two who had the most influence and best understood what she was going through, Bette Davis and James Cagney, arranged a meeting with Harry Warner to advocate for better treatment for Kay since Harry had the power to overrule Jack Warner’s decisions. However, they weren’t able to get anywhere. There is some speculation that Harry Warner was actually the one behind the studio’s campaign of humiliation for Kay Francis, not Jack Warner, and it was blackmail for some incriminating information they had about Kay, possibly an affair involving another woman. However, I did not come across any meaningful evidence supporting this claim.

By the time she did King of the Underworld, released in 1939, she was still a bigger name than Humphrey Bogart. The script for King of the Underworld was reworked to enhance Bogart’s role, but much of the film still focuses on Kay’s character. Despite this, Warner Brothers decided to give Humphrey Bogart top billing in this movie; his first time getting top billing in a movie. Knocking Kay down in the billing order was such a blatant power move on the studio’s part that critics understood exactly what was going on and couldn’t help but comment on it. Bosley Crowther wrote in the New York Times, “We simply want to go gallantly on the record against what seems to be an act of corporate impoliteness.” Bogart also felt bad about the way Warner Brothers was treating Kay. Even the movie’s original title — Lady Doctor — feels like an insult with its laziness.

Kay’s last movie for Warner Brothers was Women in the Wind, released in April 1939, which some noted had an aura of people just being eager to get the movie done and over with as quickly as possible. Perhaps the most notable thing about the production of Women in the Wind is that it’s when Kay gave a widely-quoted interview that was the basis for an article in the March 1939 issue of Photoplay magazine. This is where the famous quote, “I can’t wait to be forgotten,” came from. That line was said when she was about to film the last scene of her last Warner Brothers movie.

This article includes many candid quotes that show someone at a real crossroads in their life. She talks about wanting to take time to relax, enjoy life, and enjoy the freedom of not being under contract. She talked about wanting to retire, but didn’t completely rule out the idea of doing more movies.

“I don’t say I’ll never make another picture because if I should happen to be in Hollywood and some producer offered me a good part, I’d jump at it. But as far as another contract, or making a career of pictures is concerned, I’m through!…The parade is passing me by and I don’t care.”

Looking back at her career and the way she handled things, she was remarkably honest in her thoughts:

“Perhaps I’d have been better off if I had fought for better stories, but the end didn’t justify the means. I’d have been suspended and the time I was under suspension would have been added to the end of my contract. So, instead of being free now, I would probably have had another year to go. And, even then, I’d have had no guarantee the stories I picked would have been any better. Even if they had been, the only difference would have been that I would be retiring in a blaze of glory instead of more or less inconspicuously — and this is the way I want it. I’ll be forgotten quicker this way.”

Despite her difficulties with the studio, it’s still clearly a bittersweet ending for her. Kay still had great relationships with many crew members at the studio and got a bit misty eyed over the fact that this was the first time she wasn’t hosting a wrap party for the cast and crew.

“I knew I’d start crying and so would some of the others. I didn’t want to become maudlin or sentimental. I didn’t want to say my goodbye that way. I want to remember all these people as friends with whom I used to kid — with whom I had swell times. I don’t want to remember them — or have them remember me — with long faces and red eyes. I want to saunter off the lot and out of their lives as casually as though the picture weren’t finished and we’d be meeting again in the morning.”

As Kay Francis left the Warner Brothers studio lot for the final time, she was saluted by the attendant at the gate. Her dispute with the studio took so much out of her that she never wanted to speak of it again, simply referring to it as “her great struggle.”

After leaving Warner Brothers, she stayed active films for several years, mostly in movies for RKO and Universal but with a few for 20th Century Fox and Monogram also in the mix. Of her post-Warner Brothers movies, the best remembered is 1939’s In Name Only with Carole Lombard and Cary Grant. She also had the opportunity to appear in movies alongside people like Deanna Durbin and Rosalind Russell. 1944’s Four Jills in a Jeep is also notable for being inspired by a USO tour she did with Martha Raye, Carole Landis, and Mitzi Mayfair during World War II. After making her final film in 1946, Kay moved onto the stage and did touring productions of plays like State of the Union, Let Us Be Gay, The Last of Mrs. Cheyney, and Goodbye My Fancy. However, health issues began to take a toll on her life and she gave her final stage performance on August 5, 1954. After her shoulder was fractured during a fall, she retired from acting.

Box Office Poison: Edward Arnold

Out of all the stars dubbed Box Office Poison by the Independent Theater Owners Association in 1938, Edward Arnold probably has the least name recognition among people who aren’t well-versed in classic Hollywood films. But his career was remarkably prolific, spanning nearly 50 years and included work in film, live theater, television, and radio.

After starting his career on the stage in 1907, he spent some time doing films at Essanay Studios for a few years, but returned to the stage and didn’t start focusing on films again until 1932. In the September 1935 issue of Screenland magazine, Arnold says of his early film career, “Pictures intrigued me several years ago, but when I found I’d have to come to Hollywood to show producers I was an actor, I decided to continue on the stage…Then along came my role of the polite murderer with Ernest Truex in ‘Whistling in the Dark,’ which eventually brought us to the Los Angeles Belasco Theater. The morning after the opening, the phones began ringing with screen offers — and I’ve been here ever since.”

That production of Whistling in the Dark opened on January 19, 1932 at the Ethel Barrymore Theater in New York and also featured a then up-and-coming Claire Trevor. After getting back into films, Arnold appeared in several classics of the pre-Code era, including Three On a Match, Hide-Out, Sadie McKee, and I’m No Angel. In I’m No Angel, he starred alongside Mae West, who would later join him on the Box Office Poison list in 1938. Of course, there was also a film adaptation of Whistling in the Dark, which gave him a chance to reprise his role from the stage version.

Even though he’d had a successful stage career, he didn’t immediately become a top-tier movie star. Throughout the early 1930s, if his name made it onto the poster at all, he was often billed below actors like Franchot Tone, Robert Montgomery, and Cary Grant, but he built a good reputation as a character actor. It wasn’t until about 1935 that he started consistently getting top billing. Once he did become a top-billed star, it was sometimes in movies that have since become better remembered for starring other people. 1936’s Come and Get It, for example, is now usually talked about in relation to Frances Farmer. Or in the case of 1937’s Easy Living, he shared top billing with Jean Arthur. But whenever I hear people talk about that movie, it’s usually about Jean Arthur. So was he really that unsuccessful as a leading man?

1935’s Diamond Jim was a big opportunity for Edward Arnold to go from character actor to main star. Diamond Jim was released by Universal, who was fighting hard to compete with bigger studios like MGM and Warner Brothers at the time. They had hoped that this tale of the famed businessman would bring them the recognition they wanted. I was not able to find an exact figure for how much money Diamond Jim earned at the box office, but it didn’t earn any award nominations at least. But regardless of whether or not it was a box office smash, it wasn’t necessarily a failure for Edward Arnold. He was memorable enough in the movie to later play Diamond Jim Brady again in 1940’s Lillian Russell and The Motion Picture Herald published comments from theater owners who reported that Diamond Jim did well at their theaters.

1936’s Sutter’s Gold had a lot of potential, both for Edward Arnold and for Universal Studios, but production was rather difficult. Universal had initially wanted to make Sutter’s Gold in 1928, but the project ended up being shelved for various reasons. Once they were able to move forward with it, it ended up being very costly. City of Dreams: The Making and Remaking of Universal Pictures by Bernard F. Dick described it as a “financial nightmare” for the studio. In addition to the salary for Edward Arnold, which was three times more than he was paid for Diamond Jim, the studio spent a substantial amount of money on having Howard Hawks, William Faulkner, and Gene Fowler work on the screenplay, even though none of them received screen credit. In addition to James Cruze as director, Howard Hawks was also involved with direction in a limited capacity.

Once again, I was unable to find specific figures for Sutter’s Gold‘s box office performance from a reliable source, but many critics and theater owners were not impressed with it. One of the kinder reviews I found was in the April 1936 issue of the National Board of Review Magazine, which said, “Though the story is thrilling and exciting in parts, it is on the whole confusing.” Some comments from theater owners published in issues of the Motion Picture Herald had kind things to say about performances in the movie, but noted that their customers just weren’t interested. The September 12, 1936 issue included a quote from a theater owner in Ipswitch, South Dakota who simply said, “We wasted a good playdate when we booked this one.” A review in the Independent Exhibitor Film Bulletin from April 1, 1936 was positively scathing and basically called it Box Office Poison.

Edward Arnold’s next movie after Sutter’s Gold was 1936’s Meet Nero Wolf. Meet Nero Wolf wasn’t a runaway success, but at least the critical reception was more of a mixed bag than Sutter’s Gold. A selection of reviews published in Motion Picture Review Digest include a good amount of positive notes, several that were middling, and only one that was outright negative. Overall, many noted that it wasn’t as strong as other detective movies like the Philo Vance movies, but was still enjoyable enough for light summer entertainment. Edward Arnold’s performance was well received and even the lone negative review even noted that he deserved better material. (“The first and we hope last in a projected series…We hope that Mr. Arnold, Stander and Herbert Biberman [the latter directed the film] will be spared connection with the next in the series.” -Robert Stebbins, New Theater)

1936’s Come and get It was unquestionably a critical darling. Motion Picture Review Digest published nearly two pages of reviews that were overwhelmingly positive, with many that could safely be described as “raves,” from both mainstream magazines/newspapers and trade publications. There were lots of good reviews for its direction and photography. Since Come and Get It was produced by Samuel Goldwyn, many kind things were said about his taste in projects and called it a worthy follow-up to Dodsworth. Frances Farmer and Walter Brennan received good notes (Come and Get It was a major breakout movie for Farmer) and many praised Edward Arnold for giving one of the best performances of his career. But despite all the acclaim, the only person to win an Oscar for Come and Get It was Walter Brennan, who has the distinction of winning the first Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his performance. It’s also difficult to tell how successful it was financially. I was unable to find any specific figures, but “William Wyler: The Life and Films of Hollywood’s Most Celebrated Director” by Gabriel Miller notes that Come and Get It outperformed Dodsworth at the box office.

1937 was an interesting year for Edward Arnold’s career because he had two major movies released within the same month: Easy Living with Jean Arthur and Ray Milland and The Toast of New York with Cary Grant and Frances Farmer.

Of the two movies, Easy Living was the first one released. Initial reviews for Easy Living weren’t quite raves, but still positive overall. Generally, a lot of critics thought it was nonsense, but fun and entertaining nonsense. Variety‘s review was the most critical of the ones I found:

“This one is a poor imitation lacking the spontaneity and cleverness of My Man Godfrey…It is likely to open big and then fall off when customers are asked what they think about it. Disconcerting is the fact that the studio spared neither expense nor talent in its efforts to make something good out of something that was middle-class when it started.”

While I’m (once again) unable to find any actual figures to prove whether or not Variety was accurate in its predictions for Easy Living‘s box office performance, Paramount ran an ad in the Motion Picture Herald touting its successful run in New York during a heat wave.

It’s also worth noting that Edward Arnold’s performances were often singled out in reviews up until this point, even when the movie itself was otherwise panned. But Jean Arthur got a lot more of the attention for Easy Living. In the Independent Exhibitors Film Bulletin, theater owners were even specifically advised to feature Jean Arthur when promoting the movie, even though they called Edward Arnold’s performance “delightful.”

The fact that Easy Living and The Toast of New York were released in the same month means I was able to find reviews of The Toast of the Town right alongside reviews of Easy Living. It’s interesting to see these initial reviews juxtaposed knowing the respective reputations the movies have over 80 years later. It’s a great example of how, sometimes, early critical opinions aren’t a reliable way to tell whether or not a movie will be successful with audiences, either in the short term or years down the line. In the case of Easy Living, it’s now regarded as a screwball comedy classic, so perhaps some of the initial reviews underestimated it just slightly. The exact opposite ended up happening with The Toast of New York.

“One of the most entertaining wonderworks of the year, without a dull spot in its several thousand feet of film.” “It is screen entertainment of the highest order.” “Contains more than the usual quota of of entertainment for the classes.” “This is an important comedy drama of an important period in American history. It has been brilliantly acted and directed, and with the names of Edward Arnold, Cary Grant, Jack Oakie, and Frances Farmer decorating the marquee, it should play to heavy box office returns.” These are all excerpts from initial reviews of The Toast of New York, mostly from trade publications, which set the bar too high. The Toast of New York was reportedly RKO’s biggest financial loss of the year, losing a total of $530,000. It doesn’t seem that The Toast of New York had the benefit of a big critical re-evaluation over the years, either. As of December 2021, it only has 6.3 stars on IMDB and is most likely to be sought out by people trying to see every Cary Grant movie.

With how little specific information I was able to find about the box office performance of Edward Arnold’s movies, it’s difficult for me to tell whether or not his box office appeal was really dwindling by the time the Box Office Poison ad was published in 1938. It certainly seems that he had his ups and downs, like many performers do. In any case, it seems that Blossoms on Broadway, also released in 1937, it was a something of a breaking point. Issues of the Motion Picture Herald published in January 1938 feature some comments from theater owners who seemed positively exasperated by the movie:

“After 25 years, Adolph Zukor still makes 85 percent of his product B-C and D pictures. Will he ever find out that exhibitors want good pictures and not stuff like this one. His 1937-38 product, outside of 2 pictures up to this time, has been terrible. They drive business away. Make good ones or none at all.”

“Poorest Paramount we have taken from a can in three years. Shame to use such stars in so worthless and crude a thing as this.”

“A million dollars worth of talent wasted on this bit of disconnected and poorly constructed story. Don’t play it.”

“Good cast but plot unworthy. Very poor entertainment.”

Edward Arnold’s first movie released after the Box Office Poison ad was published in 1938 was The Crowd Roars. But this time around, he was playing a supporting role with Robert Taylor as the top-billed lead. From then on, he’d remain a supporting actor, gladly embracing smaller, richer character parts rather than main leads. The transition proved to be a good move and he finished out the 1930s with supporting roles in two of the most beloved movies of the decade: You Can’t Take it With You and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

In many cases, the idea of losing that coveted “leading man/leading lady” status would be enough to make a movie star panic, unless they were already looking to retire. But out of all the stars named Box Office Poison, Edward Arnold was perhaps the one least attached to the idea being a lead and always viewed character roles as having more to offer.

Looking back at articles about him which were published in the time leading up to the release of Diamond Jim, it’s interesting to note that he liked to sing the praises of being a character actor rather than talk about his new status as leading man like you’d expect many stars would want to. In the September 1935 issue of Screenland, he talks about himself in terms of being a character actor rather than a leading man.

“Of course, a character actor has much more liberty than a romantic leading man, for we don’t have to bother with camera angles or worry about the curl of our hair or which side of our face looks the best. All we have to do is cut loose and visualize our characters into being.”

In Photoplay magazine’s July 1935 issue, an article about him starring in Diamond Jim gave him a chance to talk about his desire to play a wide range of roles and how not being the lead can help in that respect.

“Coming to Hollywood three and a half years ago, I was darn near typed in pictures after playing gangsters in Okay, America and Whistling in the Dark. I got away from parts of that kind just in time. There’s a wide variety in other character roles. What’s more, movie audiences help you. People always know what’s going to happen to the lead — that no matter what he goes through he will in the end get the girl — but they never know what will happen to the character man — whether he’ll turn out to be a drunk, kill himself, or be hanged.”

The author of that article notes that, “these possibilities seemed to fill Mr. Arnold with a deep contentment as he leaned back and sighed restfully.” The article ends with Edward Arnold being quoted as saying, “And I thank God I’m a character actor!”

With an outlook like that, it’s no wonder he remained in high demand as a character actor for decades afterward, appearing in classics like Meet John Doe, Idiot’s Delight with Norma Shearer, The Devil and Daniel Webster, and Annie Get Your Gun. In addition to his film career, he was active in radio and television before his death in 1956.

Box Office Poison: Fred Astaire

When you look at the list of stars who were labeled Box Office Poison by the Independent Theater Owners Association (ITOA) in 1938 through a contemporary lens, it’s easy to be surprised that most of them would ever be called anything of the sort. Over 80 years have passed since that ad was published and the majority of the stars included in it are now regarded as some of the biggest icons of 1930s Hollywood. Fred Astaire is a prime example of this. Not only does his name remain synonymous with the entire genre of movie musicals, when you look at all the movies he appeared in during the 1930s alone, the list is rather impressive. It includes nine out of ten movies he made with Ginger Rogers and when you look even closer, you see that he went from supporting player to leading man in the span of a couple of years. So what happened?

In my article about Dolores del Rio, I talked a bit about how the chemistry between Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers stole some of the attention away from Dolores in 1933’s Flying Down to Rio. Even though she was the top-billed star of the movie, it’s now best remembered for being the first time Astaire and Rogers appeared together in a movie. It was also only the second film Astaire had ever appeared in, the first being 1933’s Dancing Lady.

After seeing the reaction to Astaire and Rogers in Flying Down to Rio, RKO was eager to pair them up again in 1934’s The Gay Divorcee, which was a commercial hit and earned a Best Picture Oscar nomination. The duo’s successful streak continued with 1935’s Roberta, which was followed up by the trifecta of Top Hat, Follow the Fleet, and Swing Time.

Being able to say you starred in Top Hat, Follow the Fleet, and Swing Time all in a row is extremely impressive, but a run of movies like that is a very tough act to follow. Top Hat was RKO’s most successful movie of the entire 1930s and Follow the Fleet and Swing Time were both highly successful as well. But Shall We Dance saw a notable decline in box office returns compared to Follow the Fleet and Swing Time.

When Shall We Dance was released in May 1937, early expectations were high and early buzz was favorable. For example, here’s an ad that ran in the May 5, 1937 issue of Variety:

This ad features quotes from Chicago-based publications and included remarks like:

“This latest of the Astaire-Rogers pictures is a mite more elaborate than some of the others, as breezy and full of sparkle as you’d expect…It’s all grand fun.”

“‘Shall We Dance’ comes pretty near being a perfect vehicle for them.”

“…It was a lively audience that responded with gay abandon and delicious enjoyment to superb dancing, the Gershwin music and merry drollery…peak entertainment calibre…due for a long run.”

In their own review of Shall We Dance, Variety wrote, “There have been others in the string which have had stronger tunes, superior punch laughs, and packed more dynamite in Astaire’s own specialties, yet seldom have these ingredients been made to fit so evenly. All six songs [by George and Ira Gershwin], one more than usual, have been nicely spotted with no attempt to overplay any of them. Nor is there a bad ditty in the batch.” Variety also favorably noted the quality of the script and the comedy.

By the time the May 12, 1937 issue of Variety was published, that early hype had faded fast and there was a distinct change in tone about Shall We Dance. While some theaters reported that Shall We Dance doing well at their location, several others said the response was underwhelming compared to other Astaire-Rogers vehicles. When you have blockbusters like Top Hat and Follow the Fleet in your recent career history, it’s got to be disappointing to see the release of one of your movies discussed about under headlines like, “No Flops, No Hits in Wash.”

Despite the sub-par box office returns for Shall We Dance, it didn’t lose money in the long run. However, its profits were just a fraction of what was expected. As successful the Astaire and Rogers partnership had been, by this time, they both agreed that it was time to change things up. Between 1933 and 1937, they had made seven movies together and the underwhelming box office returns for Shall We Dance suggested that perhaps the public needed a break, too.

When actors worry about getting typecast, it’s usually about being known for only playing one type of role. But in Fred’s case, he was more concerned about being pigeon-holed for being half of a duo. In his days as a stage performer before coming to Hollywood, he had been known for performing with his sister, Adele, and they didn’t stop performing together until 1932. So given that he made Flying Down to Rio in 1933, he hadn’t really had much of a chance to establish a professional identity that wasn’t tied to someone else.

Fred’s next film, 1937’s A Damsel in Distress, gave him a break from Ginger and starred him alongside George Burns, Gracie Allen, and Joan Fontaine instead. Joan Fontaine was still just an up-and-coming star at the time, but the combined star power of Fred Astaire and Burns and Allen wasn’t enough to carry the picture. It ended up being the first Fred Astaire movie to lose money. Audience responses seem to have been largely indifferent. Looking at comments from theater owners in the February 26 and March 5, 1938 issues of the Motion Picture Herald, they describe a mix of middling-to-poor audience reactions:

“Running time too long for the story. Astaire below former standard. Saved by Burns & Allen. Dancing secondary. Story poor.”

“While this picture did not do ‘Follow the Fleet’ or ‘Top Hat’ grosses, we had no walkouts, no complaints. Picture contains an abundance of laughs, and contrary to previous reports, our patrons did not feel that Gracie and George were overdone. Fred’s Drum Dance is in a class by itself. Of course, Ginger Rogers was missed in this production, but our patrons had the pleasure of seeing her the night before in ‘Stage Door.'”

“A fairly good musical that starved to death at the box office. Grossed about half the usual ‘take’ on the team of Astaire and Rogers. In spite of the valiant efforts of Burns and Allen, the picture was dull in spots and many patrons were frank to say they did not care for it. RKO should either give us the team of Astaire and Rogers or reduce our allocation.”

“This has always been an Astaire town, but they did not come out for ‘Damsel’ and those who did were not enthusiastic. Would say that a poor title, radio stars in support, Ginger Rogers lacking, and Fred himself mechanical were causes. The ‘drum dance’ was an example of the lack of spontaneity. To us, it lacked ‘it.'”

“Not half the show you were led to believe from studio publicity. Without Burns & Allen, it would have been very poor indeed. With all his dancing ability, Fred Astaire cannot carry a picture alone. Pulled only fairly well and pleased to just about the same degree.”

The less-than-enthusiastic response to A Damsel in Distress wasn’t a surprise to Fred. In his autobiography, he called it “a goodish picture” that accomplished what it was supposed to, but also acknowledged that it wasn’t a strong movie and that some of his fans were bound to be disappointed by not seeing him with Ginger.

By the time the Box Office Poison commotion got started in 1938, Fred was busy working on Carefree, bringing him back together with Ginger Rogers. In response to being named Box Office Poison, Fred seems to have largely taken it in stride. When he wrote about it in his memoir, his response is remarkably restrained. He simply wrote, “The incident bothered me, of course. In fact, it burned me up. [His wife] Phyllis dismissed the whole thing with, ‘Oh, stop worrying about it.’ And I did.” He also noted that RKO was angry enough to consider demanding a retraction, but decided to just let it be and give it time to die out on its own. RKO’s response seems plausible since, in his case, the Box Office Poison label seems to have been based on a single movie that lost money and another that merely earned less than expected.

While he let the Box Office Poison label roll off his back, movie stardom was starting to loose a bit of its luster for Fred at this point. After Damsel in Distress, he had been toying with the idea of retiring and stated this in his autobiography:

“Frankly, I was a bit fed up at the thought of fighting my way back to a movie status again. Not that I was considered through or anything of the sort, but it so happens that when you go through a lull like that, the general feeling is that you’re going to lull yourself right through the cellar floor. I was a bit worried because with a dancing career such as mine, highly specialized as it was, I couldn’t figure out for sure where I would be able to go. I would have liked to go straight dramatic, but that was not possible. I felt I wasn’t qualified to do it.”

While Carefree was in production, The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle was already lined up for Fred and Ginger and there was a lot of buzz about it being planned as their final on-screen pairing. At this point, Fred wasn’t exactly sure where his career was headed, but knew a change would be good. While Ginger was getting ready to branch out into more dramatic, non-musical roles, he was talking to other studios and weighing his options. In the meantime, making Carefree was a very enjoyable experience for him. It gave him a chance to do a golf-inspired number that he’d been wanting to do, he was quite fond of the “Change Partners” number, and he had a lot of fun with “The Yam” number. Unfortunately, it ended up being the first Astaire-Rogers movie to lose money. 1939’s Story of Vernon and Irene Castle was well received and did well at the box office, but high production costs meant that it wasn’t able to break even.

After wrapping up work on Vernon and Irene Castle, he took a bit of a break from Hollywood and later returned as a freelance actor. The 1940s ended up being a very memorable decade for Fred’s career and he was able to work with a lot of first-rate talent at various studios. During this time, he appeared in movies like Broadway Melody of 1940 with Eleanor Powell, Holiday Inn with Bing Crosby, You’ll Never Get Rich and You Were Never Lovelier with Rita Hayworth, and Ziegfeld Follies with Gene Kelly.

After 1946’s Blue Skies, he announced his retirement, but that retirement ended up being nothing more than a brief break. His career reached another high point with movies like 1948’s Easter Parade with Judy Garland, 1951’s Royal Wedding with Jane Powell, and of course, 1949’s The Barkleys of Broadway, which teamed him up with Ginger Rogers one last time.

As he headed into the 1950s, he continued to find success. 1953’s The Band Wagon is often regarded as being one of the all-time best of the musical genre, often referenced today as being on the same level as Singin’ in the Rain. As the 1950s wore on, he made a few more notable musicals like Silk Stockings and Funny Face, but started doing more television projects. He also finally got to do some non-musical movies, like 1959’s On the Beach, which he earned a Golden Globe nomination for, and 1974’s The Towering Inferno. His last acting role was 1981’s Ghost Story, but of course, he also appeared as himself in the first two That’s Entertainment! movies.

Box Office Poison: Dolores del Rio

Today, Dolores del Rio is remembered as a pioneer who became the first Mexican actress to find mainstream success in Hollywood. Her film career began in 1925 and during the silent era, she appeared in hit movies like 1926’s What Price Glory?, 1928’s The Trail of ’98, and Ramona, also from 1928. In 1926, she was named a WAMPAS Baby Star, a distinction that put her in some very good company. That year alone, other WAMPAS Baby Stars included several up-and-coming legends, like Joan Crawford, Fay Wray, Mary Astor, Dolores Costello, and Janet Gaynor, just to name a few. But over the course of her career, she certainly encountered plenty of obstacles along the way.

As she entered the 1930s, Dolores del Rio had been dealing with a series personal and professional difficulties, but she ultimately attained a very enviable status within Hollywood. She had successfully made the transition from silent film to sound, with a new contract at RKO starting in 1931. She also married Cedric Gibbons, MGM’s legendary art director, in 1930 and they became one of the most high-profile couples in town, often seen out and about with the very top tier of Hollywood’s elite, like Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. Not only did they have their respective careers, their home was a very popular social destination.

During the time del Rio was under contract at RKO, the studio was working to revamp their public image. Even though they’d had their share of notable successes, they weren’t regarded in the same esteem as rival studios like MGM and they had some financial difficulties that needed to be dealt with. In hopes of turning things around, David O. Selznick was brought on as production chief and while his tenure at RKO lasted less than two years, it was a very important time for the studio. During this time, Selznick had a hand in bringing talent like Fred Astaire, Katharine Hepburn, and John Barrymore to the studio, as well as directors George Cukor and Merian C. Cooper. He was also involved with the production of one of RKO’s signature films: King Kong. On top of all that, he helped the studio cut production costs without significantly reducing output. But while this era in RKO history is generally regarded as being artistically great, it wasn’t enough for them to move past their financial problems and the studio went into receivership in 1933.

Dolores del Rio’s time at RKO under this contract was also rather brief. Her first movie was 1931’s Girl of the Rio, which didn’t make a splash with critics, followed by 1932’s Bird of Paradise. Bird of Paradise was a critical hit and proved to be just what she needed to re-establish herself as a major star. Not only was she coming off of the underwhelming Girl of the Rio, some health issues kept her off the screen for a while before that. But while Bird of Paradise put her back on top, it lost about $250,000. 1933’s Flying Down to Rio should have been an undeniable triumph for Dolores del Rio, but even though it was a big box office success, the first on-screen pairing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers drew some of the attention away from Dolores and RKO’s financial situation meant that her contract was not renewed.

She quickly moved on from RKO and started work on series of films for Warner Brothers which gave them plenty of opportunities to showcase her as the height of glamour, including multiple films with Busby Berkeley. The first of these films, 1934’s Wonder Bar, was one of the biggest hits Warner Brothers had that year. She wasn’t the top-billed star, but she worked so well with Al Jolson that her part was expanded while Kay Francis, who was the top-billed star, saw her part get scaled back. But Wonder Bar would prove to be her last commercial high point in Hollywood for the 1930s.

After Wonder Bar, she started work on 1934’s Madame Du Barry, which provoked many heated disputes over its content. William Dieterle was brought on to direct and Dolores was excited about the project because it offered her something different from the usual types of movies she had been working on. But Joseph Breen’s office sent Warner Brothers a letter saying the script was, “filled with vulgarity, obscenity and blatant adultery” and stated that it would be a dangerous movie to make from the standpoint of industry policy. Local censor boards also objected and the movie was eventually redone without input from Dieterle, who thought the altered version didn’t do justice to del Rio’s comedic talents. Madame Du Barry went on to become a box office disappointment.

Next came 1935’s In Caliente, I Live for Love, and The Widow from Monte Carlo, with The Widow from Monte Carlo being her last film with Warner Brothers. Unfortunately, her last Warners film was not nearly as successful as her first. From Warner Brothers, she moved on to Universal to make 1937’s The Devil’s Playground and to 20th Century Fox for Lancer Spy and International Settlement, none of which made much of an impression on audiences.

By the time the Box Office Poison ad was published in 1938, citing Dolores as one of the movie stars who was failing to draw audiences into theaters, she was already well aware that it was time for a change. Movies like Bird of Paradise, Flying Down to Rio, and Wonder Bar were popular, but the roles weren’t particularly challenging for her. She had fewer opportunities to reinvent her image the way someone like Marlene Dietrich did when she made Destry Rides Again after she was also named Box Office Poison. Dolores had largely been relegated to playing glamorous, exotic types which were falling out of favor as World War II loomed on the horizon and reviews often tended to focus on things like her lavish costumes, her appearance, or her dancing skills rather than her talents as an actress. She knew being noted for those qualities was only going to become even more limiting as she got older.

Dolores had been toying with the idea of returning to Mexico long before the Box Office Poison ad was published. The Mexican film industry had been growing throughout the 1930s and when she took a trip home in August 1934, she was initially unsure about what type of reception she would receive. Even though she was a successful movie star, some of the movies she made had been criticized in Mexico. But she received a warm welcome which made it clear that leaving Hollywood for Mexico might not be such a bad idea. When she went to England to make 1936’s Accused with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., she very much enjoyed the experience of working outside of Hollywood, further giving her reason to consider leaving.

In the early 1940s, she had begun an affair with Orson Welles, which ended her marriage to Cedric Gibbons and led to her appearing in 1943’s Journey Into Fear along with Joseph Cotton. But, as is the case for several of the movies produced by Orson Welles, Journey Into Fear had its problems during production. His work on The Magnificent Ambersons meant that Welles was unable to direct the film himself (although his involvement with the direction of Journey Into Fear is debatable) and some shooting had to be rushed because of his commitments for It’s All True. By the time the movie was in post-production, any influence Welles had on the final product was significantly diminished. The film’s release was delayed due to mixed reactions during test screenings and by then, RKO had fired Welles and he was only able to make limited changes. In the end, Journey Into Fear lost $193,000 and Dolores and Orson both found the final version to be an embarrassment.

Shortly after her work on Journey Into Fear was complete, Dolores dealt with the end of her relationship with Orson Welles, the death of her father, and she decided the time was right for her to return to Mexico. Even with all of her social connections, nearly 20 years of experience working in films, and a series of agents working on her behalf, she just wasn’t able to get quality roles in Hollywood anymore and arrived back in Mexico in August of 1942. Of the move, she stated:

“Divorced again, without the figure of my father. A film where I barely appeared, and one where they were really showing me the way of the art. I wanted to go the way of the art. Stop being a star and become an actress, and that I could only do in Mexico. I wish to choose my own stories, my own director, and camera man. I can accomplish this better in Mexico. I wanted to return to Mexico, a country that was mine and I did not know. I felt the need to return to my country.”

When she arrived back in Mexico, she did not have any films lined up, but it didn’t take long for her to start getting work in the Mexican film industry. Over the years, she went on to be nominated for five Silver Ariel awards, Mexico’s answer to the Academy Awards, winning three of them and one special award in recognition for her 50-year career as an actress. She would occasionally return to Hollywood to work in movies like 1947’s The Fugitive, 1960’s Flaming Star with Elvis Presley, and 1964’s Cheyenne Autumn, as well as appearing in a series of live theatrical productions. Her final role was in 1978’s The Children of Sanchez.

Box Office Poison: John Barrymore

The Barrymore name carries a certain cachet in the entertainment world. As far back as the 1800s, members of the Barrymore family have been involved with acting, whether it was on the stage, on film, or on television. Drew Barrymore is keeping the family legacy alive today, but her grandfather, John Barrymore, along with her great-aunt Ethel and great-uncle Lionel, remain synonymous with great dramatic performers. Ethel Barrymore was known as the First Lady of American Theater and John set a record for his number of performances in a stage production of Hamlet.

Given the prestige associated with the Barrymore name, many people would probably be surprised to learn that John Barrymore was ever labeled Box Office Poison. But, unfortunately, just as acting is a common occupation in the Barrymore family, people in the family have also very famously had their struggles with substance abuse, health issues, and other problems in their personal lives. And at the time the Independent Theater Owners Association published their Box Office Poison ad in May 1938, John had hit a particularly difficult time in his already tumultuous life.

After beginning his career on the stage, John Barrymore eventually made films his primary focus in the 1920s and starred in iconic silent films like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Sherlock Holmes. When talkies came into the picture, his experience as a stage actor made him a natural fit for the transition and in the early 1930s, he starred in hits like 1932’s Grand Hotel, and 1933’s Dinner at Eight alongside his brother Lionel. In 1934, he starred in Twentieth Century, which is now thought of as a classic, but was considered a box office disappointment at the time of its release. He also starred in other movies that had underwhelming box office returns and, by the early-mid 1930s, John’s alcoholism was taking its toll on his health and his ability to do his job.

John had famously been a hard drinker before he started working in films. Back in his early career, he was known to turn up for shows drunk on occasion or would miss performances all together. By the 1930s, not only had years of alcoholism impacted John’s physical appearance, there are multiple stories about him struggling to remember his lines. The actor who was once hailed for his record-setting performances in productions of Hamlet was now having a hard time remembering his lines for movies like Counsellor at Law. His inability to remember lines cost him a role in 1934’s Hat, Coat and Glove as well as the chance to do a film version of Hamlet. In some cases, he struggled to even remember the name of the character he was playing.

Barrymore’s personal life was also as troubled as his professional life. In 1928, he had married Dolores Costello, who was well aware that his drinking was steadily becoming a bigger problem and there was little she could do to stop it. After losing out on Hat, Coat and Glove, he ended up taking a break from films while he was hospitalized for a mental breakdown and other health issues. On top of everything else, he caused a scandal by getting into a relationship with a 19-year-old fan. Dolores Costello filed for divorce in 1935.

One thing that makes John Barrymore’s inclusion on the Box Office Poison list a little bit odd is that he was effectively a supporting actor in the couple of years leading up to the ad’s 1938 publication. Suggesting that audiences were staying away from movies because of the presence of a supporting player is a bit of a reach. Given his reputation for being unreliable, studios weren’t going to risk casting him in a leading role. But in spite of everything, George Cukor was willing to take a chance on him and wanted him for the role of Mercutio in 1936’s Romeo and Juliet. Irving Thalberg had his doubts, given that Romeo and Juliet was a big passion project for him and the lavish production was already shaping up to be a very expensive production — even if it wasn’t supposed to be.

Eventually, Thalberg said yes to Barrymore, but there would be strict rules in place. During filming, Barrymore was to stay in a nearby sanitarium where he would have a nurse to keep him from drinking during his downtime and to escort him to and from the set each day. But even with those restrictions in place, Barrymore still found ways to drink. When he showed up to the set, he wouldn’t be ready to work when he was supposed to be and others would have to wait hours for him to get made up. In a sword fight scene between him and Basil Rathbone, it was pretty much filmed around him because he physically wasn’t up for the scene.

At one point, Barrymore got out of the sanitarium where he was supposed to be staying and being kept away from alcohol. When Irving Thalberg heard about this, he was ready to cut his ties with Barrymore. Thalberg contacted William Powell about taking over his role, but since Barrymore had helped Powell get a part in 1922’s Sherlock Holmes, Powell felt too much loyalty to accept the part. When the movie was released, it lost money, but it’s inaccurate to suggest that people stayed away in droves. High production costs simply made it unlikely that it would be able to become profitable. However, while some aspects of the production got positive notices from the critics, reviews of Barrymore’s performance were mixed.

Once again, Barrymore’s reputation for being unreliable made it difficult for him to find work in the film industry. After Romeo and Juliet, Barrymore was hospitalized once again, but he managed to turn things around a bit in 1937. First, he appeared in Maytime and later did a radio series of Shakespeare performances. While working on the radio broadcasts, Barrymore proved that he could be trustworthy and sober, which encouraged studios to take a chance on him again. He still often struggled to remember his lines, but cue cards were an accommodation crews were willing to make as long as he was coming in as he was supposed to. Between 1937 and 1938, he appeared in a few Bulldog Drummond movies, which gave him the chance to reclaim top billing status. He also appeared in True Confession alongside Carole Lombard and Fred MacMurray, in Marie Antoinette with Norma Shearer, and in 1939’s Midnight.

After that point, Barrymore entered a stage of his career where he largely spent his time parodying himself. He did the play My Dear Children, in which he played a has-been Shakespearean actor and his poor memory actually seemed to work in its favor. People never knew what he was going to say or do next and audiences kind of loved it. Other attempts to poke fun at his image were less successful, like 1940’s The Great Profile. He also made regular appearances Rudy Vallee’s radio show to make fun of himself. While doing a recording of Romeo and Juliet in May 1942, he collapsed and later died of kidney failure, cirrhosis of the liver, and complications from pneumonia.

Box Office Poison: Norma Shearer

When talking about the career of Norma Shearer, it’s impossible to not discuss the career of Irving Thalberg. Being married to one of the most celebrated producers in Hollywood meant that her career became very closely intertwined with his, particularly throughout the 1930s.

During the 1920s, Norma Shearer worked her way up to become one of the biggest stars at Metro Goldwyn Mayer. After starring in movies with other luminaries of the silent film era like John Gilbert, Ramon Novarro, and Lon Chaney, she transitioned well into talkies and won an Academy Award for her performance in 1930’s The Divorcee. With her 1927 marriage to Irving Thalberg, they had become one of the biggest power couples in Hollywood. Thalberg was often accused of only caring about Norma’s films, but I’ve never thought that was a fair assessment of his career. However, he did work to help her have the career of her dreams.

By the mid-1930s, Norma’s career had hit a crossroads. With production codes being fully enforced, she was no longer able to play the sophisticated, liberated women she exemplified in the pre-Code era and, under Thalberg’s guidance, she entered the “prestige picture” era of her career. Years later, when television entered the mainstream, the films she made during this time were the ones she would become most closely associated with for several decades, not her pre-Code work.

Of all the movies made during this phase of her career, 1936’s Romeo and Juliet is unquestionably one of the two that best reflects her status as the queen of MGM. As if a Shakespeare production didn’t carry enough prestige on its own, it was a truly lavish production. And it’s also the movie the Independent Theater Owners Association was complaining about when they published their Box Office Poison ad in May 1938 and included Norma Shearer on their list of stars they claimed did little to draw people into theaters.

Adaptations of Shakespeare in general were a risky venture for film studios. Even with high potential for artistic achievement, they weren’t an easy sell. When plans were announced for MGM’s adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, the only person who seemed enthused about it was Irving Thalberg. Romeo and Juliet would be the kind of prestige picture that Louis B. Mayer famously despised. Not only would it be expensive to produce, he knew it would lack the widespread appeal necessary for it to be profitable. Other MGM execs agreed. As far as they were concerned, any potential it had to win an Oscar or two wasn’t worth its estimated $1.5 million budget.

Thalberg tried to assemble an A-list cast and crew to make the concept more appealing, but that also proved to be a challenge. George Cukor signed on to direct, but jokes were already being made about the idea of Norma, who was in her 30s and had recently given birth to her second child, playing a teenager. Thalberg knew the right male lead would make or break this movie. When he approached Clark Gable about the project, Gable replied, “I don’t look Shakespeare, I don’t talk Shakespeare, I don’t like Shakespeare, and I won’t do Shakespeare.” Initially, Leslie Howard initially wasn’t interested in doing the movie and Warner Brothers didn’t want to loan him out for it anyway. However, after some reconsideration on Leslie’s part and some loan-out negotiations between Warner Brothers and MGM, Howard ended up in the part of Romeo.

Theater owners at the time had valid reason to roll their eyes about the idea of getting stuck with a Shakespearean adaptation. By the time MGM’s production of Romeo and Juliet was released, it was just over a year after an adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream from Warner Brothers set the worst kind of box office record: a record number of cancellations from theater owners.

The only way Thalberg was able to get the green light to proceed with Romeo and Juliet was by agreeing to cut the budget down to $800,000. However, production costs quickly exceeded that amount to a considerable degree. The initial $1.5 million budget seemed like a quaintly conservative figure compared to its final price tag of nearly $3 million.

The team working on Romeo and Juliet went to great lengths to make a movie that felt as authentic as possible. During pre-production, a crew spent four months in Italy photographing genuine Renaissance-era items and finding as many items as possible to bring back. Not only did the lead actors have highly detailed costumes created for them, extras in crowd scenes did as well. Massive sets were built, including a full-sized balcony. Consultants were brought on to give advice on how to adapt Shakespeare for the screen and to work with actors on their diction.

In addition to the technical costs of producing Romeo and Juliet, problems with the crew made production a drawn out process. John Barrymore, who was was dealing with alcoholism and recently had seen his marriage to Dolores Costello come to an end, wasn’t exactly reliable. Norma, the only actor in the cast without experience as a stage actor, was anxious about her performance. George Cukor struggled to find his footing as a director, which slowed down filming at times.

When shooting on Romeo and Juliet was finally complete, the first test screening was not the resounding success Thalberg had been hoping for. The audience reaction wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great, either. Over the years, Thalberg had earned a reputation for being able to rescue projects that received negative or indifferent reactions during test screenings. But in the case of Romeo and Juliet, the source material meant there was little he could do to boost its appeal. On other films, he had the option of doing things like ordering rewrites and reshoots to improve them. Even movies based on more contemporary plays and books gave him some leeway. But since Shakespeare is so deeply enmeshed in the collective consciousness, his hands were largely tied.

In spite of all the doubts surrounding the project, Romeo and Juliet actually wasn’t poorly received. Many critics gave it favorable reviews, even if they fell short of being raves. Very often, they admired aspects of the production and Norma’s performance was generally praised. After its premiere, it did reasonably well at the box office and its performance strengthened in subsequent weeks. Schools organized field trips to see it and it started trends inspired by Norma’s costumes and hairstyles in the film. However, given the total cost of production, doing “reasonably well” at the box office wasn’t enough for MGM to break even on it. In the end, it lost $922,000.

For Thalberg, the box office performance of Romeo and Juliet was a personal disappointment. This was a big passion project for him and he knew that Norma wasn’t going to act forever and wanted her to leave a strong legacy. Even when he was fatally ill, he was still asking about box office numbers for Romeo and Juliet. Romeo and Juliet was released very shortly before Thalberg’s death on September 14, 1936, making it the last film of Norma’s that he was able to personally oversee to completion. But before he died, he had put the wheels in motion for her to work on Marie Antoinette.

Perhaps the greatest irony of Irving Thalberg’s career is the fact that he made a name for himself by reining in Erich von Stroheim’s extravagant, spare-no-expense productions, but ended his career with movies like Romeo and Juliet and The Good Earth, both of which were too expensive to be profitable. Had he lived to oversee it, Thalberg’s vision for 1938’s Marie Antoinette had the potential to make von Stroheim’s extravagance look positively understated in comparison.

Irving and Norma had been pushing to make Marie Antoinette happen since 1933 and Thalberg had very big ideas for it. He imagined it filmed in color and, like Romeo and Juliet, wanted it to have larger-than-life sets and and thousands of ornate costumes. Once again, a crew had already been sent to Europe to purchase antiques and take photographs that could be referenced during production. Over 900 wigs had been created for it. By the time of Thalberg’s death, $400,000 had been spent on pre-production, so scrapping the project all together would have been a big waste of money.

In the aftermath of Thalberg’s death, the executives at MGM took some time to figure out what would become of the projects Thalberg had been working on. Many expected that Marie Antoinette would be scrapped without him, but in late 1936, Louis B. Mayer informed Norma that Marie Antoinette would be her next film and work would begin when she was ready to come back. But first, Norma had some issues to resolve with MGM. She was not at all impressed with the way the studio had been handling Thalberg’s legacy.

While on leave after Irving’s death, Norma heard stories about how some of the execs — ones who owed their entire careers to Irving — were trying to diminish his contributions to the studio and take credit for his work. Mayer was also shortchanging Norma by helping himself to the share of Irving’s profits which Norma was owed. This led to Norma making an appearance on a radio show hosted by Louella Parsons for the purpose of publicly calling Mayer out and making it known that she was considering a new studio.

At that point, Norma was still considered a reliable box office draw, so there was incentive for MGM to keep her around aside from generally avoiding the bad publicity of ripping off the widow of the man who helped build the studio. And Mayer knew how much Norma wanted to do Marie Antoinette, so agreements were eventually reached. Norma signed a new contract with MGM and Marie Antoinette was finally happening — even if Mayer wasn’t happy about having to give up those profit shares.

But without Irving around, that meant others at MGM could have more control over production of his final project. The idea of doing Marie Antoinette in color quickly went out the window. Had it been filmed in color, that alone would have added $4 million to the budget. However, Mayer and other MGM execs were still harboring some resentment over their dispute with Norma and conspired to push Sidney Franklin, the first choice to direct Marie Antoinette, out of the job and bring in W.S. Van Dyke, who was famous for filming things quickly.

When Norma heard that Sidney Franklin was out, she simply didn’t have it in her to fight it. She didn’t want to be perceived as being difficult and she found out about it on the first New Year’s Eve she would be spending without Irving. Even though Norma was willing to settle for W.S. Van Dyke, she had learned how to make studio politics work for her and put those skills to work for her once filming began. It was the only way she knew how to make sure the finished product even came close to matching what Irving had in mind. For example, when she thought Van Dyke was rushing through things, she made sure the right people knew and she ended up getting the reshoots she wanted.

Upon its release in July 1938, Marie Antoinette was very well received. Critics and audiences liked it and it earned four Academy Award nominations. Norma earned one last Best Actress nomination for her performance and MGM was able to get the favorable publicity of following through with the late Irving Thalberg’s final prestige picture. But even when filmed in black and white, the high production costs meant that it was a hit with little hope of becoming profitable. It lost $767,000.

Before his death, Irving Thalberg had been expecting Romeo and Juliet and Marie Antoinette to be Norma’s swan songs. He wanted her to leave the public eye triumphantly. But when she signed that new contract with MGM, she had a few films left before retirement.

After Marie Antoinette, Norma starred in 1939’s Idiot’s Delight alongside Clark Gable. While not nearly as extravagant as Marie Antoinette or Romeo and Juliet, Idiot’s Delight still has the distinction of being one of the few movies Clark Gable made at MGM which lost money. That same year, she was part of the all-star ensemble cast for The Women, even though she wasn’t thrilled about the role of Mary Haines. Despite the fact that The Women did well at the box office, it was another movie that fell into the category of being too expensive to be profitable. It wouldn’t earn a profit until a re-release later in the 1940s.

Even though The Women was Norma’s last big hit movie, 1940’s Escape was the last film she appeared in which earned a profit. Her final two movies, We Were Dancing and Her Cardboard Lover both also failed to turn a profit and Norma retired from acting in 1942.

Box Office Poison: Mae West

While she is now remembered as one of the biggest icons of the 1930s, and of classic cinema in general, it’s easy to forget that Mae West’s film career was actually pretty brief. She only appeared in twelve films, fewer than Luise Rainer, who was also among the stars dubbed Box Office Poison in a 1938 ad published by the Independent Theater Owners Association (ITOA).

Mae West was a master of shaping her public image through her trademark quips, often playing up the magnitude of her success. If it’s easy to forget that her film career was less than prolific, it’s even easier to forget that she was ever labeled “Box Office Poison.” She created something of a Midas-esque image for herself, with anything she touched turning to gold. When you do even the most basic level research into Mae West, you’ll inevitably find things about how her movies were credited with saving Paramount from bankruptcy, how she took credit for discovering Cary Grant, and a few witty remarks she made about how censorship made her rich.

Some of these claims are easy to fact check. All you need to do is look at Cary Grant’s IMDB profile to see that he had appeared in several movies before She Done Him Wrong, including Blonde Venus with Marlene Dietrich. As for the claim that her films saved Paramount from bankruptcy, the You Must Remember This podcast episode about Mae West and the book Hollywood Babylon touches on that. However, quotes like, “I believe in censorship. After all, I made a fortune out of it,” are interesting given that it’s widely accepted that censorship was a contributing factor to the decline of her film career.

There’s no dispute around the fact that censorship played a huge part of Mae West’s career. And there’s no questioning that she did successfully capitalize on it at times. But it was something of a double-edged sword; helping her at times and working against her her at others. During her time on Broadway prior to going to Hollywood, Mae made a name for herself by writing and starring in plays notorious for their controversial content. Her 1927 play The Drag, for example, had a financially successful tryout run, but a play about gay people that featured a drag ball scene was too controversial to be able to open on Broadway at that point in time.

Not all of her stage shows were hits, but she came to Hollywood with some real successes to her credit. Once she started working in films, she got off to a great start by stealing the show in 1932’s Night After Night and by adapting her stage hit Diamond Lil into She Done Him Wrong, which became one of the top grossing films of 1933 — after a few modifications to appease the censors, of course. She outdid herself the following year with I’m No Angel, which became Paramount’s top grossing film of 1934.

From then on, Mae was stuck working against a combination of unrealistically high expectations from Paramount and production codes that were now being more strictly enforced. She often talked about how she would intentionally include lines she knew censors would demand to be cut because they would distract their attention from the less provocative lines she wanted to keep. But the more movies she made, audiences became increasingly less receptive to the toned down version of Mae’s persona.

Belle of the Nineties was her follow-up to I’m No Angel, and while Paramount considered it a disappointment at the box office, it was still profitable and drew very sizable crowds in many cities. One theater in Atlantic City played it twelve times a day to keep up with demand. But even with production codes being enforced, protesters still came out to complain and Paramount’s publicists got to work trying to create an image of Mae West being an upstanding, moral woman at heart.

1936’s Klondike Annie, an adaptation of Mae’s play Frisco Kate, was the movie Mae was most proud of, but it was essentially the beginning of the end of her film career. Since the story involved religious workers, an interracial affair, and Mae’s character being on the run from the law, it was highly scrutinized by the Hays Office. Even once it was approved for release, many other organizations complained, some saying the story as a whole was completely unacceptable and no amount of cuts could make it redeemable in their eyes. William Randolph Hearst waged his own war against Klondike Annie, refusing to allow advertisements for it to run in his papers. Paramount found a way to work around Hearst’s ban, though. Rather than advertising Klondike Annie by name, they ran ads telling people to call for information about an important feature.

In spite of negative reviews from critics, being banned in some areas, and Hearst’s best efforts, the Motion Picture Herald reported that Klondike Annie earned $2,500-$8,000 over average per box office. Variety also credited Hearst’s campaign with generating interest in Klondike Annie. But even with any success it had, it still wasn’t another I’m No Angel.

By that point, the relationship between Paramount and Mae was becoming strained. Ernst Lubitsch was in charge of Paramount’s productions by then and Mae wasn’t happy with the way he was running things or the suggestions he had for her films. And any publicity Mae was generating from her battles with censors just wasn’t worth it for Paramount anymore. Not only was she still drawing protests, she posed a larger problem for the industry as a whole.

One of the key reasons why the Box Office Poison ad was published in the first place was because the Independent Theater Owners Association (ITOA) objected to the practice of block booking. Block booking was a practice in which theater owners were forced to book groups of movies at a time. This would involve packages of movies that were expected to be big hits and others that weren’t. If independent theaters wanted to show the surefire hits, they had to show some of the lesser movies, too.

There’s also the fact that the popularity of some stars could vary from location to location, depending on local tastes, and independent theater owners wanted more control over the movies they showed. Greta Garbo‘s movies, for example, tended to be more popular in big cities and in Europe than in small towns and rural areas. In the case of Mae West, her suggestive persona cemented her place in pop culture history, but made her a target for the ITOA.

Even before the Box Office Poison ad was published, the ITOA had been highly critical of Mae West. They argued that she was the very personification of immorality in film and block booking forced them to screen her films even if customers in their communities would stay away because of moral objections. During a 1936 sub-committee hearing in the U.S. Senate, with the Klondike Annie controversy fresh in everyone’s minds, the ITOA used her movies as a prime example of why they wanted block booking to be abolished. During that hearing, Paramount responded by submitting evidence that there had not been a single exhibitor cancellation of a Mae West movie. On the other hand, movies of the “quality type that have good moral standing” like Abraham Lincoln and Alice in Wonderland faced lots of cancellations.

Even though the ITOA lost the battle that time — block booking wouldn’t be prohibited until 1948 — Mae was still a target for them by the time the Box Office Poison ad was published in 1938. In response to the ad, she stated, “Why, the independent theater owners call me the mortgage lifter. When business is bad, they just re-run one of my pictures.” She also noted that the entire American film industry was in a lull at the time and added, “The only picture to make real money was Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, and that would’ve made twice as much if they’d had me play Snow White.”

Until 1937, Paramount had been able to use Mae’s box office performance to respond to those criticizing the moral content of her films; arguing that many people clearly did not find her movies objectionable. But while Mae still had her fans, many of them recognized that her movies just weren’t what they used to be. When Every Day’s a Holiday was released in December 1937, many theaters only played it for a single week and it became her first real box office dud. On the other hand, She Done Him Wrong spent a month in some theaters when it was released.

With the failure of Every Day’s a Holiday, Mae parted ways with Paramount and made a couple more movies at other studios. Most notably, there was 1940’s My Little Chickadee with W.C. Fields. While My Little Chickadee was a box office hit, she did not enjoy working with Fields and was even less impressed when his performance got better reviews than hers. Three years later, she made The Heat’s On for Columbia and for the first time, she did not write any of the dialogue in one of her movies. But when that failed to make an impression, she went back to performing on stage and found success in theatrical plays and nightclubs. After an extended break, she did appear in two more films, 1970’s Myra Breckinridge and 1977’s Sextette. Neither one was a financial success, but over time, became known as cult classics.

Box Office Poison: Luise Rainer

Luise Rainer occupies a very unique place in film history. While her Hollywood career was far from prolific, it is extremely notable. Today, she is perhaps most widely remembered for being the first person to win back-to-back acting Oscars for her roles in 1936’s The Great Ziegfeld and 1937’s The Good Earth. That first Oscar win for The Great Ziegfeld came just a little over a year after she made her film debut alongside William Powell in Escapade, marking an extremely meteoric rise to stardom. But almost as quickly as her career began, it began to come to an end and in 1938, she was one of the twelve stars dubbed “Box Office Poison” by the Independent Theater Owners Association. Two years later, she left Hollywood behind.

It’s extremely difficult to talk about Luise Rainer without talking about Greta Garbo. Not only were Garbo and Rainer both under contract to MGM at the same time, Rainer was effectively brought to MGM for the purpose of turning her into a successor to Garbo.

Throughout the 1930s, Greta Garbo was one of the biggest names under contract to MGM. But she notoriously did not play the conventional movie star game. She didn’t answer fan mail or sign autographs and very rarely spoke to the press. Even though she was nominated for multiple Academy Awards and won an honorary Oscar, she never once attended a ceremony. She very rarely appeared at other industry events like film premieres. However, being such a big star also gave her the power to make life more difficult for Louis B. Mayer. Garbo fought to be paid what she knew she deserved and to have more control over the films she made.

Since Garbo played by her own rules, Mayer was interested in finding someone else who had the same type of appeal that Greta Garbo had, but who would also be more willing to do the sorts of things that movie stars typically do. When Rainer caught the attention of an MGM talent scout, Mayer thought she was exactly what he was looking for in that regard. However, this was a plan that would later completely backfire on him.

When Luise Rainer came to Hollywood in 1935, MGM got right to work trying to mold her into the image they wanted her to have. As she was originally from Austria, MGM had her work with coaches to improve her English and she made Escapade shortly after arriving in Hollywood, a remake of a film she had made while working in Europe. Even though she had starred in the original version of that movie, she only ended up starring in Escapade after Myrna Loy dropped out. But it all worked out because Rainer made a great impression on audiences and critics.

On the surface, it looked like Luise Rainer was poised to have a storybook tale of Hollywood success. But she wasn’t particularly keen on the idea of doing films in the first place and once MGM’s publicity machine kicked into high gear, she quickly started becoming uncomfortable with her new role as movie star. And with her two subsequent films, The Great Ziegfeld and The Good Earth, and the two Oscar wins that came with them, she had become even more dissatisfied. (For more on the role MGM’s campaigning efforts played in her two wins, I highly recommend Be Kind Rewind’s video essay on the subject.)

While Garbo rarely spoke to the press, Luise Rainer would do interviews — but she didn’t make any false pretenses about loving Hollywood. Interviews weren’t her thing and neither were big industry events. She went to the Oscar ceremonies to accept her awards, but in 1938, she had to be dragged there.

When she won her Academy Award for The Good Earth, she had fully intended on staying home that night. But when Louis B. Mayer found out she would be winning that night and she wasn’t there, someone was sent to her home to get her to the ceremony. In a recap of the ceremony, Variety wrote she was, “rather hurriedly dressed in a long-sleeved pink crepe gown. She did not bother with makeup or pause to more than comb her hair.” On top of everything else, her personal life was very strained at the time. A Guardian article quotes a 1999 interview in which she explained that on the night of the 1938 Academy Awards ceremony, she had just had a fight with Clifford Odets, her husband at the time, and he had to drive her around the building three times before she had composed herself enough to go inside.

In later years, Luise Rainer would say that winning back-to-back Oscars felt like a curse for her film career because it made the studio think they could throw her in anything and she would make it work. Looking back on her career, she would often explain that at MGM, she felt like she was just another tool in the factory without any agency over the direction of her career. She longed to play people like Madame Curie and to do movies like For Whom the Bell Tolls, but she was never able to.

When she went to Louis B. Mayer and told him that her “source had dried out” and she wanted to quit, it led to an argument that involved Mayer telling her, “We made you and we can kill you.” The films she made at MGM after The Good Earth were rather lackluster and Rainer herself said of them, “…except for The Great Waltz, the stories and the ambiance was not very good. I didn’t like it, and I wanted to get back to Europe.”

1938 was the last year Luise spent at MGM and by the time the Box Office Poison ad was published, her films had indeed taken a downturn at the box office. As lavish as The Great Ziegfeld was, it still managed to make a profit for MGM. The Good Earth, while very successful, was simply too expensive to have any hope of turning a profit. Her next two films, 1937’s The Emperor’s Candlesticks and Big City, were both profitable, if not as acclaimed as her previous films. But 1938’s The Toy Wife, The Great Waltz, and Dramatic School all failed to break even. She would describe being cast in The Toy Wife as being a failed punishment because, while it wasn’t a good movie, she at least greatly enjoyed working with Melvyn Douglas. In 1940, she moved from Los Angeles to New York City and made one more movie, 1943’s Hostages, for Paramount before taking an extended break from film acting.

Luise Rainer’s career is a prime example of how powerful MGM’s approach to developing new stars could be — and how powerful the system could be if turned against a star who didn’t stay in line. However, she also acknowledged that her film career ended because she wanted it to end. In 2010, Vanity Fair invited Luise Rainer to answer the Proust Questionnaire in honor of her hundredth birthday. When asked what she considered to be her greatest achievement, she said, “I could say such and such a film or something, but I can also say that it has been to overcome situations that would make me unhappy.”

Box Office Poison: Marlene Dietrich

If there was one group of people hit particularly hard by the Box Office Poison ad of 1938, it was Hollywood’s glamour icons and Marlene Dietrich was unquestionably one of the most glamorous of them all. While now regarded as being one of the most unforgettable stars of the 1930s, the film legacy of Marlene Dietrich has greatly benefited from critical re-evaluation over time.

Marlene Dietrich arrived in Hollywood in 1930 following the release of The Blue Angel to continue making movies with her director/mentor Josef von Sternberg at Paramount Studios. After arriving in America, Dietrich and von Sternberg made six more films together, most of which are celebrated by cinephiles today. However, initial critical reception to their films was something of a mixed bag.

Right out of the gate, Dietrich and von Sternberg had a smash hit with Morocco, earning Academy Award nominations for both Dietrich and von Sternberg, and breaking box office records at the Rivoli Theater in New York and Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood. Paramount had been making big bets that Morocco would turn their new star into a huge success and it was a gamble that paid off. Morocco‘s success at the Rivoli Theater in New York even convinced Sid Grauman to reconsider his anti-Paramount sentiment and allow Morocco to have its Hollywood premiere at the Chinese Theater, making it the first time a Paramount film would have its Hollywood opening in the Chinese Theater.

Morocco was followed by 1931’s Dishonored and 1932’s Shanghai Express. Today, Shanghai Express is regarded as one of von Sternberg’s greatest masterpieces, and while some critics at the time appreciated it, others called it a trashy, mindless adventure story and some complained that Dietrich’s posing was tiresome. A critic for Vanity Fair was downright vicious in their critique of Shanghai Express, writing, “In the early days of his career, Sternberg presented…the honest American idiom of the open attack. But soon, he was cultivated by the cult…He traded his open style for fancy play, chiefly upon the legs in silk, and buttocks in lace, of Dietrich, whom he has made a paramount slut. Sternberg is, by his own tokens, a man of meditation as well as action; but instead of contemplating the navel of Buddha his umbilical perseverance is fixed on the navel of Venus.” Despite the critics, Shanghai Express went on to become the top grossing picture of 1932.

Shanghai Express may have been able to weather the critics, but Dietrich’s subsequent collaborations with von Sternberg did not. Blond Venus, The Devil is a Woman, and The Scarlet Empress were all expensive productions that were not overwhelmingly received by audiences. 1933’s The Song of Songs, Dietrich’s first Hollywood film made without von Sternberg’s direction, also failed to take the box office by storm.

Dietrich had some success at the box office again in 1936’s Desire, but even after making her last film with von Sternberg, Dietrich continued to end up in movies that were so expensive to produce, it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for them to be profitable. The Garden of Allah, released in 1936, originally had a budget of $1.6 million, but it went over budget by $370,000, which is about how much money the movie lost.

1937’s Angel would end up being the breaking point in Dietrich’s relationship with Paramount Studios. Angel paired Dietrich with director Ernst Lubitsch and Paramount had high hopes that Angel would be a prestige picture for the studio. It was not.

By the time Angel went into production, Lubitsch was stuck in the midst of battles with the studio that made it difficult for him to give movies the highly polished touch he was famous for. When he assigned writer-producer Benjamin Glazer to work on Angel, Glazer quickly walked off the project when he realized how much control Dietrich would have. Shortly after Lubitsch took the reins, Dietrich was left coping with the death of John Gilbert, who she she had been seeing at the time.

From then on, production continued to be on the stormy side and Glazer’s concerns over Dietrich’s control proved to have merit. Lawrence Langner of the New York Theater Guild visited the set of Angel and would later tell a story about how a dispute between Dietrich and Lubitsch over a hat Lubitsch wanted Dietrich to wear led to reshoots costing $95,000. (According to some sources, the hat Greta Garbo wears in Ninotchka, the movie that redeemed her reputation after the Box Office Poison ad, is a near replica of the disputed hat from Angel. However, I’ve also seen sources that say Garbo designed the Ninotchka hat herself, so it’s difficult to tell how accurate this bit of trivia is.) Making matters worse were complaints from the Hays Office over the film’s content, leading to even more costly changes.

Upon its release, Angel actually got some praise from critics, earning positive reviews from The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. However, those reviews did not help turn it into the box office darling Paramount had been hoping for. Instead, it marked the end of Dietrich’s time at Paramount with them buying out her contact for $250,000.

One of the most frustrating things about Marlene Dietrich is the fact that she often gladly bent the truth when reality didn’t fit the image she wanted to project. For a prime example of this, look no further than Maximillian Schell’s 1984 documentary Marlene. Over the course of Schell’s interviews with Dietrich, she makes a wide range of claims that include things that could easily be disproved through simple fact checking, such as her insistence that she didn’t have a sister, and statements that would later be contradicted when things she herself had written in private were made public. During the documentary, she insists that she didn’t really care about her career and never took it seriously. But when her daughter, Maria Riva, published her book about her mother in 1993, she included an excerpt of a letter Dietrich had written to her husband, Rudi Seber, after the Box Office Poison ad was published, which paints another picture:

“I have already used up too much time and money hoping that the studio would come up with something that could erase the ‘Box Office Poison’ but they have nothing to offer. I have been advised, discreetly, that they are willing to pay and forget it, but that for appearances, I must have a lawyer write to them, etc.

The $250,000 will keep us going for a while. Something will come up eventually, and then things will be all right again. I have to believe that Hemingway was right when he said that it did not happen only by Jo’s hand, that much came from inside me.

Here it is very expensive but you know the mentality of the studios. I don’t dare have the smell of ‘has been’ or even ‘out of work star.’ So, I’m spending what I have in order to appear very glamorous, when really I am lonely and bored and — to you I can admit it — frightened.”

Riva also recalled Dietrich making a phone call to Seber, during which she made statements along the lines of:

“Papi, we are leaving America. They say they can’t sell Dietrich films anymore. Those idiots, all idiots, of course, they can’t sell them…because they are bad — nothing to do with Dietrich. Even Garbo is on that list. The pop-eyed one, that is possible, who wants to pay money to look at her — but Hepburn? Yes, she is named, too. Not to be believed!”

“The pop-eyed one” mentioned in Riva’s recollection of this phone call seems to refer to Bette Davis, who Riva cites as being included in the Box Office Poison list. While this is inaccurate, I am willing to believe that Dietrich did privately express those general sentiments about the list.

After the failure of Angel, Dietrich packed up her dressing room at Paramount, left Hollywood behind, and set sail for a European vacation. In her book, Riva stated that, “Once in New York, my mother enjoyed herself enormously. Being ‘Box Office Poison’ might damage her fame in the ‘nickel-and-dime’ people category, but could not influence the rarefied circles she preferred to move in.” 

As tumultuous as this time was for Dietrich’s career, it was effectively the beginning of one of the most significant chapters of it. She certainly had options available to her, but one potential career pathway was one that was completely out of the question.

Back in her home in her home country of Germany, Adolf Hitler and Josef Goebbels, the head of Nazi propaganda, desperately wanted her to come back and start appearing in German films again. Goebbels promised her that if she returned to Germany, she could be the queen of German cinema. Since Dietrich despised the Nazis, and had even been actively helping people fleeing the Nazis to get out of Europe, she refused. Instead, she started Americanizing her image, much like Greta Garbo had done after the publication of the Box Office Poison ad.

During her trip to Europe, she received an offer from Joe Pasternak to come work for Universal for a significantly lower salary than she had been receiving from Paramount. While initially reluctant to accept the offer, Josef Von Sternberg encouraged her to do it, telling her, “I made you into a goddess. Now show them you have feet of clay.” It proved to be a good career move, as her first movie at Universal was 1939’s Destry Rides Again co-starring Jimmy Stewart. Not only was it a box office success, it helped her reshape her public image.

While Destry helped revive her film career, it wouldn’t be long before Dietrich chose to use her stardom to serve a greater purpose. When the U.S. became involved in World War II, she quickly threw her time and energy into supporting the war effort. She had become an American citizen in 1939 and was actively involved in selling war bonds, volunteering at the Hollywood Canteen, and performing for Allied troops fighting overseas. She put her life in serious jeopardy by doing shows in places that brought her close to active combat areas. Billy Wilder later remarked that Dietrich spent more time at the front line than Eisenhower. In addition to her live shows, she also recorded songs as part of the Musak Project, which were intended to have a demoralizing effect on enemy troops. In recognition of her service, she was awarded the Medal of Freedom in 1947. Dietrich considered her wartime work to be the proudest achievement of her career.

Once the war was over, she made a few significant films, such as Stage Fright, A Foreign Affair, and Witness for the Prosecution. However, films became a less important part of her career than they had been before the war. Instead, she focused more energy on being a touring performer. She began doing live shows in 1953 and continued taking her show on the road until 1975 when she was injured after falling off of a stage. After making her final film appearance in 1979’s Just a Gigolo, she retired from public life to live in her Paris apartment.