When Sam Goldwyn can with great conviction Instruct Anna Sten in diction Then Anna shows Anything Goes.
That was of course just a small section of Cole Porter's celebrity-studded lyric for the title song of his 1934 Broadway show and up to today it was one of the very few things I knew about Sten, mostly variations on the theme that Sam Goldwyn 'discovered' her in Europe, brought her to Hollywood and lost a young fortune attempting to make her a star. The overriding impression was that she was beautiful but had the acting talent of an amoeba with learning difficulties. Now that I have seen her at last in a film produced around the time Goldwyn was actively promoting her I realise how wrong it was to believe the misinformation of the day. The fact is she was a fine actress and clearly Porter was exaggerating her speech problems to serve his lyric; as it happens she possessed a fine speaking voice and had no problem with English. If anyone is miscast here it is Ralph Bellamy who is about as convincing as a Polish farmer as Percy Kilbride would be as a Boston Brahmin. The plot has Manhattan sophisticate Gary Cooper moving into his family home in Connecticut and falling for the Polish girl (Sten) on the farm next door. If anything Sten turns in the best performance in a film that boasts, in addition to Cooper, Helen Vinson, Sig Ruman, and Walter Brennan. On the strength of this performance I intend to seek out other movies featuring Sten.
That was of course just a small section of Cole Porter's celebrity-studded lyric for the title song of his 1934 Broadway show and up to today it was one of the very few things I knew about Sten, mostly variations on the theme that Sam Goldwyn 'discovered' her in Europe, brought her to Hollywood and lost a young fortune attempting to make her a star. The overriding impression was that she was beautiful but had the acting talent of an amoeba with learning difficulties. Now that I have seen her at last in a film produced around the time Goldwyn was actively promoting her I realise how wrong it was to believe the misinformation of the day. The fact is she was a fine actress and clearly Porter was exaggerating her speech problems to serve his lyric; as it happens she possessed a fine speaking voice and had no problem with English. If anyone is miscast here it is Ralph Bellamy who is about as convincing as a Polish farmer as Percy Kilbride would be as a Boston Brahmin. The plot has Manhattan sophisticate Gary Cooper moving into his family home in Connecticut and falling for the Polish girl (Sten) on the farm next door. If anything Sten turns in the best performance in a film that boasts, in addition to Cooper, Helen Vinson, Sig Ruman, and Walter Brennan. On the strength of this performance I intend to seek out other movies featuring Sten.