blanche-2 Laurence Olivier, Merle Oberon, Ralph Richardson, and Binnie Barnes star in "The Divorce of Lady X," a 1938 comedy based on a play. Olivier plays a young barrister, Everard Logan who allows Oberon to spend the night in his hotel room, when the London fog is too dense for guests at a costume ball to go home. The next day, a friend of his, Lord Mere (Richardson), announces that his wife (Barnes) spent the night with another man at the same hotel, and he wants to divorce her. Believing the woman to be Oberon, Olivier panics. Oberon, who is single and the granddaughter of a judge, pretends that she's the lady in question, Lady Mere, when she's really Leslie Steele.We've seen this plot or variations thereof dozens of time. With this cast, it's delightful. I mean, Richardson and Olivier? Olivier and Oberon, that great team in Wuthering Heights? Pretty special. Olivier is devastatingly handsome and does a great job with the comedy as he portrays the uptight, nervous barrister. Oberon gives her role the right light touch. She looks extremely young here, fuller in the face, with Jean Harlow eyebrows and a very different hairdo for her. She wears some beautiful street clothes, though her first gown looks like a birthday cake, and in one gown she tries on, with that hair-do, she's ready to play Snow White. Binnie Barnes is delightful as the real Lady Mere.The color in this is a mess, and as others have mentioned, it could really use a restoration. Definitely worth seeing.

theowinthrop Lawrence Olivier and Merle Oberon did two movies together within two years. One is considered one of the great romantic films of all time, and the movie that made Olivier a great movie star (and gave Oberon her best performance role): WUTHERING HEIGHTS. The other is this film, made in England a year earlier. THE DIVORCE OF LADY X is a romantic comedy (as WUTHERING HEIGHTS is a romantic tragedy). Olivier is a lawyer, Everard Logan, who is a dynamic barrister, but is also a total misogynist. One night he checks into a hotel just ahead of a crowd of people. It is a very foggy night (the type of pea soup fog that London was known for up until a notorious "killer" fog in the 1950s), and the crowd (who'd been attending a party in the hotel) need beds. The management tries to get Logan to allow one or two socialite ladies to sleep on a couch and a day bed in his rooms, but he refuses. But he has not reckoned with Merle Oberon as Leslie Steele. The granddaughter of a high court judge, she manages to get into Logan's rooms and manipulates him to not only agree to her sleeping there, but appropriates his bed (he goes onto the couch - much to his discomfort).The next day they share a breakfast, and in the smalltalk it is evident that despite his mistrust of women Logan finds Leslie very attractive. But she kittenishly refuses to tell him her name. She is determined to learn more about him, and she finds his attitude toward women infuriating. In the meantime, Logan is approached by a wealthy nobleman (Ralph Richardson as Lord Mere) as a potential client. Mere suspects his wife Lady Mere (Binnie Barnes) of having an affair. In fact, he tells Logan her Ladyship was with her lover in the hotel that Logan knows he was in on the night of the fog. Logan (naturally) jumps to the conclusion that Lady Mere was his mysterious roommate that night. I will not go into the plot any further, except to say that Leslie eventually realizes what a mistake Logan has made, and decides to use it to teach him a lesson about women.The script has the feel of a Wodehouse novel, but is slighter. Still the performances of Olivier, Oberon, Richardson, Barnes, and Morton Selden (as Oberon's grandfather) are all splendid. It shows what a good cast can do with even the slightest of materials. Take a look at some of the minor scenes to see what I mean: Selden's first scene, complaining about his weak coffee to his butler/valet, who tells him off properly (they've been used to each other's personalities for years). Or Olivier dealing with a young clerk in his office, who is certain there were two Lady Meres in the office two minutes before (there were, but Oberon and Barnes left together), and ends up thinking the poor clerk is a simpleton. Or the waiter in the hotel who can't understand why the tenant in Olivier's room is constantly changing from a man to a woman to a man. As I said, a slight charming comedy - but it is very charming.

Gordon Cheatham (cheathamg) At one point in the film, Olivier is cross examining a woman accused of adultery during a divorce trial. She is acting coy and Olivier goes off into a rant against all women. Below is a quote of his words."Woman has a religion of her own, the ancient creed of womanhood. There is only one article of faith, but every woman sincerely and steadfastly believes in it, and that is she is the unique and perfect achievement of the human species, being especially evolved to be above criticism, beyond reproach and outside the law. Man in his folly and kindness has been bamboozled into accepting woman as a rational being and has granted her emancipation on that assumption. What is his reward? Modern woman has disowned womanhood and refuses man's obligations. She demands freedom but won't accept responsibility. She insists upon time to develop her personality and she spends it on cogitating on which part of her body to paint next. By independence, she means idleness. By equality, she means carrying on like Catherine the Great. By companionship with man, she means that he should wait upon her hand and foot. Modern woman has no loyalty, decency or justice; no endurance, reticence or self-control; no affection, fine-feelings or mercy. In short, she is unprincipled, relentless and exacting; idle, unproductive and tedious; unimaginative, humorless and vain; vindictive, undignified and weak, and the sooner man takes out his whip again, the better for sanity and progress."

marxi Spoilers Ahead Weak and tiresome story of wealthy woman and a conceited barrister who meet because she needs a room on a foggy night. The woman deceives the barrister telling him she is married when she is not and she thinks she is quite clever. She enlists acquaintances to help her with this gag and of course they all find this nonsense hilarious. Too bad the audience won't! Then, as you might have suspected, the barrister and the woman fall madly in love.Even Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon with their high brow acting techniques can't bring any life to this muddled and insipid film. 70/100.