A LADY OF CHANCE
Starring Norma Shearer, Lowell Sherman, Gwen Lee and John Mack
Brown
PICTURE PLAY MAGAZINE
April 1929
Did you ever hear of the spirituelle lady crook who marries the man to trim him and then falls in love and confesses all? She makes her appearance again in "A Lady of Chance," and Norma Shearer tries to make her both a noble lady and a hard-boiled comedienne. The result is hardly calculated to quicken one's pulses and evoke audible huzzahs. But I suppose, with routine pictures what they are, this one will be swallowed as easily as many like it. At any rate, Dolly, the heroine, wears lots of expensive dresses and, in spite of her misdemeanors, achieves a happy ending in the arms of her husband. So there is not the slightest chance that susceptible spectators will be depressed by the machine-made quality of the picture and the self-conscious overacting of Miss Shearer and her partners in crime, Lowell Sherman and Gwen Lee. Even Eugenie Besserer, one of the most reliable character women, strays from the path of reticence and piles on the simplicity, quaintness and sweetness of a country mother by the spadeful. The John Mack Brown cult certainly does not include me among its votaries, so his usual impersonation of a clerk will stand on its own merits with those who see the light.
Polly Moran starts a new paragraph, because in the bit she plays in a single scene, she brings a refreshing breath of vitality and spontaneity. Her bit is low comedy, of course, but that is its virtue. She dares to be funny, without giving a whoop for the refinement and daintiness so sedulously cultivated by lady-like stars. She succeeds thereby in capturing sympathy for her efforts.
For more information, see "A Lady of Chance" as our "Feature of the Month"