Rockabye is a 1932

1932 in film

-Events:*Cary Grant's film career begins*Katharine Hepburn's film career begins*Shirley Temple's film career begins*Disney released Flowers and Trees, the first cartoon in three-strip Technicolor film.*Santa, first sound film made in Mexico released....

 American

Cinema of the United States

The cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...

 drama film

Drama film

A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...

 directed by George Cukor

George Cukor

George Dewey Cukor was an American film director. He mainly concentrated on comedies and literary adaptations. His career flourished at RKO and later MGM, where he directed What Price Hollywood? , A Bill of Divorcement , Dinner at Eight , Little Women , David Copperfield , Romeo and Juliet and...

. The screenplay by Jane Murfin

Jane Murfin

Jane Murfin was an American playwright and screenwriter.Born in Quincy, Michigan, Murfin began her career with the play Lilac Time, which she co-wrote with Jane Cowl. The Broadway production opened on February 6, 1917 and ran for 176 performances...

 is based on a play by Lucia Bronder.

Plot

When stage

Theatre

Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...

 actress Judy Carroll testifies on behalf of her former lover, accused embezzler

Embezzlement

Embezzlement is the act of dishonestly appropriating or secreting assets by one or more individuals to whom such assets have been entrusted....

 Al Howard, she loses custody of Elizabeth, an orphan she had planned to adopt. Her devoted manager Antonie "Tony" de Sola urges her to travel to Europe with her alcoholic mother Snooks to alleviate her emotional pain. While there she reads a play entitled Rockabye, which eerily resembles recent events in her life. Despite Tony's qualms, she is determined to star in a Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 production.

Playwright Jacob Van Riker Pell is certain the sophisticated Judy will be unable to portray convincingly his heroine, a tough girl from Second Avenue

Second Avenue (Manhattan)

Second Avenue is an avenue on the East Side of the New York City borough of Manhattan extending from Houston Street at its south end to the Harlem River Drive at 128th Street at its north end. A one-way street, vehicular traffic runs only downtown. A bicycle lane in the left hand portion from 55th...

, until she confesses she was raised there herself. The two hit it off and Judy convinces Tony to produce the play. On the verge of divorce, Jake proposes he and Judy wed as soon as he is free.

Jake fails to appear at the opening night party for Rockabye, and his mother tells Judy her daughter-in-law has just had a baby and asks her to forget her son. When Jake finally arrives and assures her he still wants to marry her, Judy insists he return to his wife and newborn child. Devastated, she is comforted by Tony, who finally reveals his feelings for her.

Production

RKO purchased the rights to the play from Gloria Swanson

Gloria Swanson

Gloria Swanson was an American actress, singer and producer. She was one of the most prominent stars during the silent film era as both an actress and a fashion icon, especially under the direction of Cecil B. DeMille, made dozens of silents and was nominated for the first Academy Award in the...

 and hired George Fitzmaurice

George Fitzmaurice

George Fitzmaurice was a film director and producer. Fitzmaurice's career first started as a set designer on stage...

 to direct the film adaptation. Anxious to accommodate exhibitors who were awaiting a new Constance Bennett

Constance Bennett

-Early life:She was born in New York City, the daughter of actor Richard Bennett and actress Adrienne Morrison, whose father was the stage actor Lewis Morrison , a wealthy performer of English and Spanish ancestry...

 film, the studio rushed the script into production with Phillips Holmes

Phillips Holmes

Phillips Holmes was an American film actor who appeared in 44 films between 1928 and 1938. His credits included Grumpy, An American Tragedy, Broken Lullaby, Dinner at Eight, and Great Expectations....

 as the male lead. When the completed film was shown to executives, they declared it unreleasable and called in George Cukor to salvage it. The new director replaced Holmes with Joel McCrea

Joel McCrea

Joel Albert McCrea was an American actor whose career spanned 50 years and appearances in over 90 films.-Early life:...

 and Laura Hope Crews

Laura Hope Crews

Laura Hope Crews was a leading actress of the American stage in the first decades of the 20th century who is best remembered today for her later work as a character actress in motion pictures of the 1930s...

, in the role of Judy's mother, with Jobyna Howland, reshot all their characters' scenes, and re-edited the balance of the film.

Cast

• Constance Bennett ..... Judy Carroll
• Joel McCrea ..... Jacob Van Riker Pell
• Paul Lukas
  Paul Lukas
  Paul Lukas was an Austrian-Hungarian-born actor.-Biography:Born Pál Lukács in Budapest, he arrived in Hollywood in 1927 after a successful stage and film career in Hungary, Germany and Austria where he worked with Max Reinhardt. He made his stage debut in Budapest in 1916 and his film debut in 1917...
  
   ..... Tony de Sola
• Walter Pidgeon
  Walter Pidgeon
  Walter Davis Pidgeon was a Canadian actor, who starred in many motion pictures, including Mrs...
  
   ..... Al Howard
• Jobyna Howland ..... Snooks Carroll

Critical reception

The New York Times observed, "There are tears enough in Rockabye to drown a plot, a circumstance which is a form of mercy in the case of this particular plot . . . As for the performance of Miss Bennett, a conservative opinion would be that she is a better actress than Rockabye makes her seem . . . Joel McCrea as the young playwright is better than the lines he has to recite."