...thus I can't rate it. Every now and then a rumor comes up that the entirety or fragments have been found, but since it doesn't even show up on the very dark gray market, I doubt it. Checking various articles, the synopsis is that George Bancroft, as the wolf, corners the copper market, then sells short. He makes a fortune, but unknowingly bankrupts his maid's fiancé. The maid is played by spitfire Nancy Carroll. To get revenge she tells the wolf that his wife, played by Olga Baclanova, has been cheating on him with his partner, played by Paul Lukas. The wolf believes the story, not knowing about the broke fiancé, and gets revenge by ruining himself and thus his partner in the process by making unwise trades. He then walks away from the marriage leaving both his partner and wife broke, which was about the worst thing that could happen to you at the end of the roaring 20s.
Newspapers panned its lack of originality. Knowing the players I can get an idea how this must have worked. Bancroft usually played the "he-man" type, and was already a big silent star at Paramount. He had a slow deliberate way of speaking, and stayed on top at Paramount until his own ego did him in. If Bancroft had portrayed Popeye in 1930, he would have played it like he was Bluto. This was his first talking picture. Nancy Carroll often played the pert smart mouth, earning the reputation of a redhead in both her parts and her problems with management. I don't know if what she told the wolf about his wife was true, but I can see her playing the scene with gusto, true or false.
Now we come to the most ponderous part. Olga Baclanova could barely speak English when the talkies came in, but she was such a big star, playing the parts of evil seductresses, Paramount gave her a try. This was her first talking picture too, and I can only judge it by the one that came after it - "A Dangerous Woman", made also in 1929. I could barely understand a word she said in that one. The idea of her and Lukas carrying on any passionate scene in which they had to speak to one another can only make me smile in a "Singin in the Rain" kind of way as Lukas also had a very heavy accent when he first started out in film, having migrated from Hungary as an adult. I base this on some of the very early talkies that I have seen him in. Again, this is his first talking picture performance. Lukas, however, improved greatly in a short period of time, and although the accent always remained, his speech was quite clear in a matter of a few years.
If you want to see a movie made before the crash about stock brokers and how they lived made by the same studio - Paramount - try to find a copy of 1929's "Nothing But the Truth" starring Richard Dix. It gives you a good idea of the amounts of money that the rich threw around and the risks that stock brokers seemed to love to take in that pre crash era.
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