The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1929)

Some months back TCM ran the 1929 movie version of The Last of Mrs. Cheyney. Knowing that I hadn't blogged about it before, I made it a point to DVR it so I could do a blog post on here.

Norma Shearer plays Fay Cheyney, a woman who is displaying all of the trappings of wealth although, as we soon learn, she's not really wealthy. Instead, she's gotten what wealth she has by stealing other people's jewels. She gets invited to a party being hosted by wealthy Mrs. Webley (Maude Turner Gordon), whom she met in Monte Carlo back when going to the Riviera for a season was a thing. So she brings her nominal butler Charles (George Barraud), who's really her partner in crime, to the party, with him supposedly being a society person too.

Mrs. Cheyney is very popular with the other guests, since she's claiming she's an Australian widow, something that I'm guessing would have been a bit uncommon in the England of the 1920s where this movie is set. Among the guests are Lord Dilling (Basil Rathbone) and the much older Lord Elton (Herbert Bunston), both of whom take a more romantic interest in Mrs. Cheyney, not realizing her true nature.

Lord Dilling is about to figure it out, however. He sees Charles and recognizes that Charles is somebody who had been caught out in Monte Carlo last season. If Charles is here with Mrs. Cheyney, it can obviously only mean one thing, which is that somebody is about to have their jewels stolen, and that Mrs. Cheyney is in on it.

So how to handle the situation discreetly, since this sort of British high society wouldn't be about to let the police make a public case of such things if they could avoid it? Lord Dilling decides he's going to confront Mrs. Cheyney alone. Except that he makes what might be a bit of a mistake in doing it in her private bedroom. If everybody were to find him there in the middle of the night, that too would be a bit of a scandal, at least among their social circle. And Mrs. Cheyney, not really being a part of that social circle, decides that perhaps she might just not care what happens to the rest of them socially.

Ultimately, it's revealed to the other guests that Mrs. Cheyney does in fact have Mrs. Webley's jewels, but returns them to her. There was still a robbery, though, and the party guests do think something might have to be done. Mrs. Cheyney still does have a trick up her sleeve, though. Lord Dilling recognized Charles from Monte Carlo, but it transpires that Dilling might not have been a perfect gentleman in Monte Carlo, and that allows a way out for everybody.

The Last of Mrs. Cheyney is an interesting movie for several reasons. One is that it's an early talkie, a genre that's known for having the technical issues of trying to get dialogue on film properly. While most of the scenes are set in the chambers of an English country house, I found the movie to be surprisingly not static. Now, it's certainly not as open as something like Norma Shearer's The Divorcee from the same year, but there are a lot of movies that I find more static.

The bigger problem, I think, is with the story, which seems to me as though it would have been old-fashioned even back in the mid-1920s. It's based on a play and the dialog feels rather stagebound. The plot is also a bit unrealistic. But at least the production code wasn't in effect yet, as I shudder to think of the constraints the movie would have been over if it had been in effect.

Then again, I don't really have to think. The movie was remade in 1937 with Joan Crawford as Mrs. Cheyney, and again in the early 1950s under the title The Law and the Lady starring Greer Garson. All three movies, having been made at MGM, are available on DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive, so one can see for oneself how the story was handled in different eras.