A Lost Lady Reviews

This was the second time around for the title Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, and author Willa Cather was so disgusted by what was done to it that she forbade further sale of her works to Hollywood. Irene Rich starred in the 1925 silent version, which was fairly good, but this is hardly more than a fashion show for Stanwyck. She plays a woman who is about to be married when her fiance is killed by the irate husband of a woman with whom he'd once dallied. This event so traumatizes Stanwyck that she believes herself to be incapable of another love. She hides herself away at a mountain retreat, wallowing in self-pity. One afternoon, while hiking through rough terrain, she falls and is hurt. Then along comes genial Morgan, a lawyer in his dotage. (He was actually only 44 at the time but made to look considerably older.) He helps her back to mental and physical health and she is drawn to him, more out of affection than passion, and eventually marries him. Soon after, she meets Cortez, a dashing type, and sparks fly immediately. She is unhappy again and regrets having married Morgan, but it all works out when she tells Morgan how she feels about Cortez and the old codger drops dead of a heart attack. This was one of Stanwyck's many films with "Lady" in the title, though she seldom played a lady in any of them. Cather based the character of Marian Ormsby on the wife of Silas Gerber, governor of Nebraska in 1875, who lived in a big house in Red Cloud, Cather's home as a girl.