Becky Sharp

US (1935): Drama

Set against the background of the Battle of Waterloo, Becky Sharp is the story of Vanity Fair by Thackeray. Becky (Miriam Hopkins) and Amelia (Frances Dee) are girls at school together, but Becky is from a "show biz" family, or in other words, very low class. Becky manages to insinuate herself into Amelia's family and gets to know all their friends. From this possibly auspicious beginning, she manages to ruin her own life, becoming sick, broke, and lonely, and also ruins the lives of many other "loved ones". In the movie we get to see the class distinctions in England at the time, and get a sense of what it was like for the English military at the time of the Napoleonic wars. (Lisa Grable, IMDb)

After only a few weeks filming, director Lowell Sherman developed pneumonia and died. His replacement, Rouben Mamoulian, scrapped his footage and began again from scratch on this first feature-length film to be shot in the 3-color Technicolor process. Preview audiences complained that the sound was unintelligible, so RKO re-recorded the entire soundtrack by re-recording their Photophone track on a Western Electric rival process, and then transferred it to the Photophone system for the release print. The RKO production also features Cedric Hardwicke, Billie Burke, Nigel Bruce and Alan Mowbray.

 Use this link to view the original theatrical trailer for Becky Sharp on IMDb.com.

1 nomination