ROCKABYE (1932)

George Cukor directed this one fairly early in his career and pulled off a total bomb--thank goodness he improved enough to deliver classics like THE WOMEN and THE PHILADELPHIA STORY later. To be fair, he's not the only problem here; his leading lady, Constance Bennett, never feels fully invested in creating a character, and the melodramatic story of thwarted mother love was a bit creaky even back then, though the specifics of the plot have potential. Bennett is a Broadway actress who has to testify in a court case involving a former lover (Walter Pidgeon) and it comes out that she is trying to adopt a baby that, it is strongly implied, was the product their illicit union. The publicity surrounding the case causes the adoption officials to deny her custody of the child, which leaves Bennett heartbroken. She goes to Europe to recover and returns after several months to appear in a new play called "Rockabye" that mirrors her own situation. Her agent, Paul Lukas, who has harbored an unrequited love for Bennett for years, urges her not to take the part, but she does, and she also falls in love with the handsome playwright (Joel McCrea), who is in the middle of a divorce. Things go well for Bennett for a time; Lukas arranges for her to spend regular time with her "daughter," and she and McCrea become a hot item with marriage in their future. However, on the very night that Bennett's play opens (and is a hit), McCrea finds out that his soon-to-be ex-wife is having a baby. McCrea's mother comes to Bennett and asks her to let him return to his wife. Will she do the right thing? What pleasures there are here come from some of the actors, mostly McCrea, Lukas, and Jobyna Howland as Bennett's blowsy mother. Sterling Holloway, later the voice of Winnie the Pooh in the Disney cartoons, has a brief scene as a kid who begs a pianist to play "Poor Butterfly," which leads into a song by Bennett. There is a wonderful pre-Code scene from early in Bennett and McCrea's relationship showing breakfast burning on the stove while the two go at it, presumably on the kitchen floor, and she wakes up the next morning in a bed full of balloons. Except for that single scene, the direction is pedestrian at best, and there are many moments of ragged editing and awkwardly inserted shots that detract from the flow of the film. [TCM]