Rockabye (1932)

How sad is this?

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

In other words, it's all about scandal and it took two directors to get it done.In other words, it's combination soap opera, screwball comedy, mother love saga, backstage saga, love story and even a bit of a musical, although Constance Bennett never does sing "Poor Butterfly" for the pesky Sterling Holloway. It starts off with Bennett in court as a corespondent in a scandalous trial, losing her adopted daughter as a result, and then sailing off to Paris with vain mother Jobyna Howland, returning to star in a play ironically called "Rockabye", getting to visit her former daughter thanks to understanding respectable adoptive parents, and being fought over by producer Paul Lukas and playwright Joel McCrea. With a lack of direction in it's structure struggling plot, it's ironic that two directors (George Cukor and William Fitzmaurice) were at the helm. At her most glamorous, Bennett does get to stretch her acting muscles, but it is the boozy, glamour obsessed Howland who steals the film, vainly comparing her looks to daughter Bennett's as her frozen face barely moves around her lips. It's everything (and more) that made precode so much fun, but simply goes around in circles plotwise, leaving the viewer truly dizzy.

This was the third film McCrae had made with Constance Bennett, and backed by Selznick and directed by Cukor, I'm surprised it wasn't made into a bigger production (it's only 68 minutes). According to a review on TCM.com, this film was a dud at first. Cukor did many reshoots and edits to fix it up. Lead Judy Carroll (Bennett) has to testify against Al Howard (Walter Pidgeon), and because of that, she is not allowed to adopt the little girl she had been raising. To get her career going again, Judy wants to do a play written by "Jakobs" ( McCrae), but she has become so "refined", that he doesn't think Judy can do the part justice. Judy takes him around to her old, rough neighborhood to prove she started off at the bottom, and can do the part justice. Bennett even sings a song in a pub during a night on the town. Of COURSE they fall in love, and if Jakobs' jealousy doesn't get in the way, it could work out. Then more complications arise, and they must decide if you CAN have it all. Jobyna Howland plays Judy's mother, and she's so over the top, and drunk half the time that she really steals the scenes in which she appears. Also a couple lines for Sterling Holloway (Winnie the Pooh !) in the pub. This seems to have started as a play by Lucia Bronder, her only film project. There are a couple of abrupt, rough edits, but after reading the history of the film, I guess that's to be expected. It's pretty good... I'm actually surprised at the low rating that this has... of course, it IS only 200 votes so far.

Constance Bennett brings vim and vigor to this soppy story of maternal longings. In Bennett's most recent hit movie, What Price Hollywood, she said, "I can't have a baby in every picture", but in that film, and in Rockabye, no kidding, there's a baby. In Bennett's private life, as all fan mag readers knew, between marriages Bennett had adopted a baby and was raising it as a single, working mom. This was unusual in 1932, but as fan mag readers also knew, Bennett did as she pleased. In Rockabye, Bennett, a celebrated Hollywood star with an adopted baby, plays Judy, a celebrated stage star adopting a baby. A case of art imitating life. Did Bennett's femme fan base vicariously see themselves in Bennett's character, a lone woman with child? Not likely, as Judy did not struggle alone to raise an adorable tyke but had multiple hands assisting - namely a nanny, nurse, governess, cook, and her own mother, plus a male presence in the person of her doting manager. Did Bennett's femme fan base wonder why Bennett didn't marry first and then pursue motherhood? Did the adoption agency wonder? Did audiences wonder why Bennett, at the peak of her Star Power, insisted on making this never produced and unproducible play?Bennett is fabulous and gives a wonderful and lively performance. In films prior to What Price Hollywood Bennett was passive, even lethargic. In Rockabye she kicks up her heels, sings in a speakeasy with the pals of her youth, gets frisky with scrambled eggs and balloons, and has a rollicking good time with her new love. I suspect Bennett was playing herself, a free-spirit who thumbed her nose at conventions. Bennett too is believable in the script's hard-to-swallow scenes of sorrow and sacrifice. Variety's reviewer wrote, "This actress is one of the few who can somehow achieve conviction in just such stagey things" and "She is accountable for practically all its merits." How did the public respond to Rockabye? After the opening in New York, Variety predicted it would do well, as all Bennett films had done. Bennett's biographer wrote that it was a colossal box-office flop. TCM wrote that RKO records showed it was a respectable hit and grossed slightly more than the very successful What Price Hollywood. So it was a flop and a hit? Maybe it was both. After a disastrous preview of Rockabye, the film was remade with a new director and costars. This would have doubled production costs and resulted in a loss, regardless of grosses. RKO then wised up - in future, no more babies. 10 stars for Bennett. 0 stars for story.

Rockabye is both the title of this film and the title of a play that society writer Joel McCrea wants Constance Bennett to star in. She's a hit in the play, the movie left a bit to be desired.This movie is strictly Connie's show and she has three men panting after her. First is Walter Pidgeon who is a political fixer of sorts who is on trial for bribery. Her relationship with him causes her to be subpoenaed as a witness by District Attorney Charles Middleton. Though Pidgeon is acquitted both their reputations have suffered. As a result the baby she has adopted is taken from here by the blue noses who run the Bureau of Child Welfare. What this crowd might have done with Angelina Jolie or Madonna today is something to contemplate.Her second man is agent Paul Lukas who suggests a nice long European trip till the scandal talk dies down which she does and where she meets McCrea. His character seems to be based on that real society playwright George Kelly, uncle of Grace. He writes a play that proves to be her biggest hit.Connie's lucky in her career on stage, but singularly unlucky in love. The rest of Rockabye will show that should one care to view it. Bennett and McCrea were a screen team of sorts doing four films including this one in the early Thirties. According to Tony Thomas in the films of Joel McCrea and THE authority on such matters Robert Osborne, the film was originally shot with Phillips Holmes in Joel's role, but Connie got George Cukor the director to re-shoot her scenes with McCrea. Personally in this somewhat maudlin film I think that Phillips Holmes might have been done the real favor.George Cukor who usually had such a good touch in these 'women's' pictures went off the mark in this early work of his.