Success at Any Price
| Success at Any Price | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Film Still of Colleen Moore from Success at Any Price. | |
| Directed by | J. Walter Ruben |
| Produced by |
Merian C. Cooper (Exec prod) H. N. Swanson (Assoc prod) |
| Written by |
John Howard Lawson (Scr) Howard J. Green (Scr) |
| Starring |
Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Genevieve Tobin Colleen Moore |
| Music by | Max Steiner |
| Distributed by | RKO Radio Pictures, Inc. |
Release dates | May 3, 1934 (USA)[1][2] |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Success at Any Price is a 1934 sound film starring former silent film actress Colleen Moore and Douglas Fairbanks Jr..
Cast
- Douglas Fairbanks Jr. - Joe Martin
- Genevieve Tobin - Agnes (Carter)
- Frank Morgan - (Raymond) Merritt
- Colleen Moore - Sarah [Griswold]
- Edward Everett Horton - [Harry] Fisher
- Nydia Westman - Dinah
- Allen Vincent - Geoffrey Halliburton
- Henry Kolker - Hatfield
Story
Joe, an amoral capitalist and friend to Sarah Griswold, gets a job as a clerk in an advertising agency and starts to work his way to the top. He is fired, but Sarah intervenes on his behalf and he manages to create an ad that earns him a promotion. He meets the mistress of his boss and decides he wants to win her from him. The company is in trouble, but Joe has invested wisely and sells out his boss to his competitor. He abandons Sarah and proposes to the mistress, who marries him. Joe becomes head of his agency, but because he neglects his new wife, she becomes the mistress of another man. He attempts suicide, but Sarah rescues him and nurses him back to health.
Background
Based on the play Success Story by John Howard Lawson, as produced by Group Theatre, Inc. (New York, 26 Sep 1932). Colleen's romantic interest in this film, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., was almost a decade younger than her (or maybe a decade older, depending on what her real birthdate was). However, Moore retained a youthful but mature look into the 1930s.
Superficially like many of Colleen's earlier roles (long-suffering woman whose beloved who has abandoned her), the story and her character hacked the old fairy-tale character as her earlier films, reflecting the grittier, more realistic feel Depression-era audiences wanted from films. This film was released less than a week after Social Register, also starring Moore.
Footnotes
- ↑ "Success At Any Price: Technical Details". theiapolis.com. Retrieved April 9, 2014.
- ↑ "Success Story". New York Times. Retrieved April 9, 2014.
- Jeff Codori (2012), Colleen Moore; A Biography of the Silent Film Star, McFarland Publishing,(Print ISBN 978-0-7864-4969-9, EBook ISBN 978-0-7864-8899-5).