BLONDE VENUS (1932) B/W 92m dir: Josef von Sternberg

w/Marlene Dietrich, Herbert Marshall, Cary Grant, Dickie Moore, Francis Sayles, Robert Emmett O'Connor, Gene Morgan, Rita La Roy, Sidney Toler, Morgan Wallace

This bizarre combination of campy excess and soap opera plot attempts to turn the exotic Dietrich into a long-suffering mother figure. She sacrifices herself to Grant (if that's a sacrifice) in order to pay the hospital bills for her ultra-proper husband (Marshall).

From The Movie Guide: "Dietrich suffers, for once; Von Sternberg's paen to the pain of love in all its variations is so lovingly rendered that the shoestring story looks almost seamless. No one ever looked lovelier after sinking to the gutter than Dietrich --- even her tatters are photographed to maximum effect. Dickie Moore was perhaps the most beautiful little boy ever in movies and the two male stars are there to bask in all that is Dietrich. She also appears in her trademark top hat, white tie and tails singing 'You Little So and So' but the sequence that lives on and on is the gorilla surprise and 'Hot Voodoo,' a highpoint of expressionistic eroticism, replete with blonde afro. Lensed two years before the code; hopefully your copy won't have the skinny-dipping opening deleted."