Hollywood legend has long had it that silent film star John Gilbert was brought down by the advent of talking pictures and his having a voice that wasn't particularly suited to the new medium. Recently, TCM ran a night of movies dealing with the transition to sound, including the one credited with starting Gilbert's end: His Glorious Night.
The setting is one of those European resorts that catered to the upper crust of European society, especially in the pre-war years the nobility, that would have seemed exotic for American audiences of 1929, with an added vibe of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. It's the sort of place where the visitors amuse themselves watching polo and steeplechase, and dressing to the nines to go to dinner. Staying at the resort is Princess Orsolini (Catherine Dale Owen), accompanied by her mother Eugenie (Nance O'Neil) and a much older military attaché, Col. Krehl (Gustav von Seyffertitz). The princess is betrothed to Prince Luigi (Tyrell Davis), although he's an absolute drip and this is clearly a marriage of political convenience.
John Gilbert plays Captain Kovacs, a military officer who, however, is not of high birth. He meets Orsolini, and it's love at first sight like Vronsky and Anna Karenina, except that in this case Orsolini is only engaged, not actually married. However, Orsolini discovers that Kovacs isn't of the nobility, and that makes going any further in their relationship a decided no. Mom and Krehl find out what's going on, and they're pissed about it. Kovacs, understanding that a lot of what's going on is being driven not by the princess but by her handlers, figures out a way to try to get back at them all, which is to make himself look even worse than he really is, so that if this information comes out it would be an even bigger scandal. To this end he drops hints of having spent time in prison and the implication that he's still a conman and the relationship is part of a con.
Mom wants to see Kovacs personally, and she and Krehl hope that they can come up with some way to get Kovacs to leave the resort, even if they have to pay him off to do it. Their plan is to get to his suite and look for any love notes the princess may have written to Kovacs, and then impress upon him that he could get in trouble if he doesn't leave. Kovacs is having none of it, and makes the demand that the princess spend an evening alone with him in his suite. However, while they're trying to talk things out, Orsolini faints. Since this happens on the balcony and Kovacs has to get Orsolini back to her room, this gets seen by at least one other person, and gossip gets around. Worse, at breakfast it's discovered that Kovacs is still there.
His Glorious Night was the first John Gilbert talkie to be released to theaters, although it was the second one filmed. While the movie may have helped to start the downward slide of Gilbert's career, I have to say that it's not because of Gilbert's voice. True, it's not as stereotypically deep as some other stars' voices would prove to be, but it's not as bad as legend would have you believe. Instead, there were a bunch of other factors at play. Chief among them is the dialog, which is terrible, and doesn't serve anybody well. Gilbert's protestations of love here were parodied in Singin' in the Rain, and it's easy to see why anybody who remembered the movie (and Arthur Freed was at MGM already in 1929) woud make the comparison. Catherine Dale Owen comes across as wooden here, and like a lot of early talkies the direction feels like it's done for the benefit of the microphone and not for artistic reasons.
I'd also suggest that with the depression about to come, there was also going to be a range of new faces coming to the movie screen to replace many of the stars of the 1920s. For the young romantic comedy type, Robert Montgomery was already at MGM and would make waves the following year in The Big House; Clark Gable would make even bigger waves in A Free Soul; and the elegant type could be done by someone like Leslie Howard who had the British accent for it. The sorts of movies that Gilbert featured in would be going on their way out.
TCM ran a restoration print of His Glorious Night, and the print itself looks and sounds quite good. It's just a shame that it couldn't have been in service of a better story.
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