La Swanson Locations In Europe

Perfect Understanding (1932) Sees Gloria Less Glorious With Talk

So What's All This About a "Hot-Cha Husband"?

Gloria Swanson made this drawing room comedy in England during 1932. Her star had been setting and any success would amount to a comeback, which Perfect Understanding wasn't, though it did emerge a most polished so-far talker out of the UK. Swanson would write later that this was the first picture she made with her own funds, a not-intended outcome, but one forced by the usual chaos attendant on filming in foreign climes with unfamiliar crews. Part of Perfect Understanding takes place in Cannes, so Swanson went there and got nice footage that I presume was the first taken of that exotic playground using sound. United Artists had to bail out Perfect Understanding, and according to Variety, bring Swanson back to America after she "had been caught abroad without liquid finances." The actress was obliged to relinquish her UA stock in exchange for the rescue.

Release of Perfect Understanding timed with bank holidays and boxoffice malaise, result a woeful $168K in domestic rentals, plus $121K foreign, this toward unsuccessful recovery of $285K spent on the negative. Variety acknowledged greater costs had they shot in Hollywood, but that would merely have made Perfect Understanding a worse flop. Swanson waited over a year to try another vehicle, momentum of her once great career spent. Perfect Understanding is now available from the Cohen Group on Blu-Ray. It's enjoyable, a Brit precode novelty, not unlike US counterpart The Divorcee, from which story situations borrow heavily. Laurence Olivier, in mid-twenties and properly dashing, makes marital love to eight years his senior Gloria. She sings well, not excessively, though Victor released a disc that didn't impress Variety: Miss Swanson brings nothing to the wax but a celluloid rep. Such snark did little to advance GS re-launch as a musical star with her next, Music In The Air, a goal for which she had no small aptitude, but timing and luck were past going Gloria's way.