''What a Widow!'' was a 1930 American
pre-Code
Pre-Code Hollywood was the brief era in the Cinema of the United States, American film industry between the widespread adoption of sound in film in 1929LaSalle (2002), p. 1. and the enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code censorshi ...
romantic comedy
Romantic comedy (also known as romcom or rom-com) is a subgenre of comedy and slice of life fiction, focusing on lighthearted, humorous plot lines centered on romantic ideas, such as how true love is able to surmount most obstacles. In a typica ...
film directed by
Allan Dwan
Allan Dwan (born Joseph Aloysius Dwan; April 3, 1885 – December 28, 1981) was a pioneering Canadian-born American motion picture director, producer, and screenwriter.
Early life
Born Joseph Aloysius Dwan in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Dwan, was ...
and produced by and starring
Gloria Swanson
Gloria May Josephine Swanson (March 27, 1899April 4, 1983) was an American actress and producer. She first achieved fame acting in dozens of silent films in the 1920s and was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Actress, most f ...
. It was distributed through
United Artists
United Artists Corporation (UA), currently doing business as United Artists Digital Studios, is an American digital production company. Founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks, the studi ...
.
The film was produced by
Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr.
Joseph Patrick Kennedy (September 6, 1888 – November 18, 1969) was an American businessman, investor, and politician. He is known for his own political prominence as well as that of his children and was the patriarch of the Irish-American Ken ...
It received generally positive reviews and was noted for its animated title sequence created by William Dietz, but was met with lukewarm returns at the box office.
Cast
*
Gloria Swanson
Gloria May Josephine Swanson (March 27, 1899April 4, 1983) was an American actress and producer. She first achieved fame acting in dozens of silent films in the 1920s and was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Actress, most f ...
as Tamarind Brook
*
Owen Moore
Owen Moore (12 December 1886 – 9 June 1939) was an Irish-born American actor, appearing in more than 279 movies spanning from 1908 to 1937.
Early life and career
Moore was born in Fordstown Crossroads, County Meath, Ireland. Along with his p ...
as Gerry Morgan
*
Lew Cody
Lew Cody (born Louis Joseph Côté; February 22, 1884 – May 31, 1934) was an American stage and film actor whose career spanned the silent film and early sound film age. He gained notoriety in the late 1910s for playing "male vamps" in films ...
as Victor
*
Margaret Livingston
Margaret Livingston (born Marguerite Livingston; November 25, 1895 – December 13, 1984), sometimes credited as Marguerite Livingstone or Margaret Livingstone, was an American film actress and businesswoman during the silent film era. She is ...
as Valli
*
William Holden
William Holden (born William Franklin Beedle Jr.; April 17, 1918 – November 12, 1981) was an American actor, and one of the biggest box-office draws of the 1950s. Holden won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the film ''Stalag 17'' (1953) ...
as Mr. Lodge
*Herbert Braggiotti as Jose Alvarado
*
Gregory Gaye
Gregory Gaye (born Grigoriy Grigoryevich Ge; October 10, 1900 – August 23, 1993) was a Russian-American character actor. The son of an actor, he was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. He was the uncle of actor George Gaynes.
He was a cadet ...
as Baslikoff
*
Adrienne D'Ambricourt as Paulette
*
Nella Walker
Nella Walker (March 6, 1886 – March 22, 1971) was an American actress and vaudeville performer of the 1920s through the 1950s.
Biography
The daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Walker, she was born and raised in Chicago. In 1910, she marrie ...
as Marquise
*
Daphne Pollard
Daphne Pollard (born Daphne Trott; October 19, 1891 – February 22, 1978) was an Australian-born vaudeville performer and dancer, active on stage and later in US films, mostly short comedies.
Diminutive stage star
Born Daphne Trott, in the in ...
as Masseuse
*Reginald Sharland (uncredited)
Preservation status
This film is now considered a
lost film
A lost film is a feature or short film that no longer exists in any studio archive, private collection, public archive or the U.S. Library of Congress.
Conditions
During most of the 20th century, U.S. copyright law required at least one copy o ...
. The soundtrack is preserved at the
UCLA Film and Television Archive
The UCLA Film & Television Archive is a visual arts organization focused on the preservation, study, and appreciation of film and television, based at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
Also a nonprofit exhibition venue, the archiv ...
, and the trailer is preserved at the
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
.
[''Catalog of Holdings The American Film Institute Collections and The United Artist Collections at The Library of Congress'' railer only p. 206. c.1978 by the American Film Institute]
See also
*
List of lost films
For this list of lost films, a lost film is defined as one of which no part of a print is known to have survived. For films in which any portion of the footage remains (including trailers), see List of incomplete or partially lost films.
Reas ...
References
External links
*
*
Stillsat Glorious Gloria Swanson website
Stillat gettyimages.com
1930 films
1930 romantic comedy films
American romantic comedy films
American black-and-white films
Films directed by Allan Dwan
American independent films
Lost American films
United Artists films
1930 lost films
1930s American films
{{1930s-romantic-comedy-film-stub