The Baroness and the Butler Reviews

Making her American film debut, Annabella is woefully miscast as the Baroness, due to several problems: her English was not yet ready to be heard by human ears and her comedic talents still needed refining. She is the married daughter of the Hungarian Prime Minister (Stephenson), and her husband (Schildkraut) doesn't know how to handle this spitfire. Powell is the butler in the castle and eventually becomes leader of the opposition party. In that capacity, he makes an impassioned speech on behalf of old-age pensions, relief programs, and the reduction of armaments, a speech that could have been made this morning in Congress. The butler returns as a full-fledged politician and announces his love for the baroness. It's all a lot of nonsense and bears no resemblance to reality or even to good farce (THE MOUSE THAT ROARED, for instance). Powell is dapper and debonair, and Lang peopled the screen with all the best second bananas in the hope of making this thing fly: it didn't. (Annabella, born Suzette Charpentier, began her career with a small role in Gance's NAPOLEON and was married to Tyrone Power in the 1940s before returning to her native France and retirement.)