Unknown Blonde
Cast & Crew
Hobart Henley
Edward Arnold
Barbara Barondess
Barry Norton
John Miljan
Dorothy Revier
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
Although lawyer Frank Rodie proudly maintains high ethical standards in his practice, he agrees to take a lucrative divorce case in which a professional co-respondent is to be used in order to pay off a $3,500 debt that his extravagant wife Helen has incurred. When the father of the man involved in the case insists that Frank fill in for the absent co-respondent, Frank reluctantly plays the part and is shocked when his own wife "discovers" him in the "compromising situation." As the result of Frank's unwitting collusion, Helen secures a divorce and marries her stockbroker, Raymond F. Wilson, with whom she had been investing Frank's money. Embittered by his experience, Frank becomes the city's most successful divorce lawyer, employing co-respondents without any qualms. Years later, Frank, who had been denied visitation rights, insists on attending his daughter Judith's eighteenth birthday party. Because Helen has prejudiced Judith against her father, Frank and his gift are rejected. Helen, however, eagerly agrees to act as a financial go-between for Frank but uses most of the money that Frank earmarks for Judith to buy clothes for herself. Helen's expensive purchases eventually make Raymond, who has fallen on hard times, jealous and suspicious. Convinced that his wife is having an affair, Raymond visits Frank and asks him to act as his divorce lawyer. When Frank learns of Helen's duplicity with Judith's money, he agrees to take the case and, while pretending to be in love with his ex-wife, frames her as she had framed him. Frank then is hired by a well-to-do couple to trap their son's virtuous but poor young wife in a "compromising situation," unaware that the wife involved is Judith. At the divorce trial, Frank forces Judith to admit that she had been set up by him, thereby vindicating her at the expense of his own reputation. Grateful for his self-sacrifice, Judith finally embraces Frank.
Director
Hobart Henley
Cast
Edward Arnold
Barbara Barondess
Barry Norton
John Miljan
Dorothy Revier
Leila Bennett
Walter Catlett
Helen Jerome Eddy
Claude Gillingwater
Arletta Duncan
Maidel Turner
Franklin Pangborn
Esther Muir
Clarence Wilson
Arthur Hoyt
Crew
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
The title on the viewed print was Broken Lives. The film was reviewed by some journals under that title. According to a news item in Motion Picture Herald, E. H. Goldstein, a vice-president at Majestic, arranged to have a series of articles about the experiences of a professional co-respondent appear in the New York Mirror just prior to the film's release. The anonymous co-respondent used in the articles, which were titled "I Was the Unknown Blonde in One Hundred Divorce Cases," also worked as a "special advisor" on the film and was hired from advertisements that Majestic ran in various Los Angeles newspapers. The film was included on a list of "to be boycotted" pictures compiled by the Catholic Church in Detroit in July 1934.
