Her Majesty, Love (1931)

Her Majesty Love was both the final film of Broadway star Marilyn Miller who could not translate her appeal from the stage to the screen in three tries. Not even the fact that she was romantically involved with studio head Jack Warner could save her career as Warner put business before the bedroom and terminated her contract.

This is a remake of a German film made the same year. In it Marilyn is a bartender at a top Berlin nightclub where she meets and falls in love with Ben Lyon, a young playboy whose family made a fortune in ball bearings. One sight of Marilyn and Lyon loses his bearings.

Marilyn and Lyon were at one time an item themselves and they do have good chemistry. At Marilyn's insistence, Jack Warner got W.C. Fields from Paramount who had not done anything in sound except for one short subject at RKO. Miller knew him from the Follies and admired his talent and she got him for the supporting role as her father.

Because Fields is in a supporting part his fans will no doubt be disappointed there isn't more of him. What there is is cherce as someone else in another picture said. His drunkeness and his juggling act from the circus gross out Lyon's snooty relatives.

The film however impressed Paramount executives to realize what a dimension in the talent of W.C. Fields they'd been missing. That's when he started getting those roles in the famous classics he made for Paramount and Universal. I'm sure Adolph Zukor thanked Jack Warner for doing this favor for him.

Leon Errol is in the film too and he's a drunken playboy who has hopes of nailing Marilyn on the rebound as Lyon's relatives put a kabosh on the romance. He's surprisingly subdued and a bit more serious in a role he'd play over and over again.

The film flopped and Marilyn left Hollywood. She made a big comeback on Broadway in Irving Berlin's As Thousands Cheer, introducing Easter Parade with Clifton Webb.

Still Her Majesty Love is not a bad film and it's a chance to see a rarely shown Fields film for his fans and one of three chances to see one of the biggest musical stars of the Twenties in Marilyn Miller.