While Julia Cavendish is starring in Romeo and Juliet on Broadway, a rumor arises that she is retiring from the stage. Although Julia is set to star in a new play with her mother Fanny, the grand dame of the New York stage, and her daughter Gwen, who will make her stage debut, Julia yearns for love. Meanwhile, Julia’s brother Tony, who has compromised the Cavendish name and “gone Hollywood,” arrives home incognito to avoid the police, who are after him for injuring a movie director during a skirmish on the set. Also in pursuit of Tony is a temperamental actress who is suing him for half a million dollars for breach of promise. Tony’s dramatic entrance puts the house in chaos, which increases Julia’s yen for the quiet life. When Gilmore Marshall, a platinum magnate and old admirer of Julia, arrives in New York, she decides to quit the stage and settle down. That afternoon, however, the Cavendish manager, Oscar Wolfe, has scheduled a reading with a playwright, and Julia is forced to cancel her date with Gil. Gwen has a date with her stockbroker boyfriend, Perry Stewart, and when they quarrel over their different lifestyles, she refuses to attend the reading. Fanny then advises Gwen that marriage isn’t a career and tells her daughter and granddaughter that their succeeding her in the theater is all that has kept her alive. After Fanny collapses in grief, Gwen blames herself. Tony, meanwhile, is trying to find a way out of the country and is given a passport by Gil. Dressed as a bellhop, Tony escapes a throng of fans outside the house. When Perry then enters, Julia tells her daughter to marry him, vowing herself to live from now on. By the next season, Gwen has forfeited her stage debut to become Mrs. Perry Stewart and Julia has quit the stage to marry Gil. Fanny, however, is starring in The Merry Wives of Windsor against her doctor’s orders. Oscar warns Julia that she will be miserable without her life in the theater. That same evening, when eight o’clock rolls around and she doesn’t have to be at the theater, Julia is melancholy. When Gil then tells her about the “vast solitude” of the South American plains, where he is planning to live, she begins to re-think her plans. Gwen then enters with Perry and announces that she will be doing Oscar’s play while Perry is on a business trip. Tony arrives, this time in flight from the Princess of Albania, and begins to describe a play he recently bought. While Gil and Perry talk dryly about business, the Cavendishes revel in theater chat with Oscar. They then receive word that Fanny has collapsed between acts. All rush to the theater, where Fanny, determined to finish the play, dies backstage. Julia says goodbye to Gil forever and readies herself to finish the play for her mother. More on Wikipedia or Mubi
Academy Awards, 1931- Nominee: Best Actor in a Leading Role
Locarno International Film Festival, 2013- Official Selection
Watch The Royal Family of Broadway (1930)
