The Animal Kingdom (1932)

• Directors
  • Edward H. Griffith
  • George Cukor(uncredited)
• Writers
  • Horace Jackson(screenplay)
  • Philip Barry(play)
  • Edward H. Griffith(uncredited)
• Stars
  • Ann Harding
  • Leslie Howard
  • Myrna Loy

  The first film version of Philip Barry's Broadway play The Animal Kingdom stars Ann Harding, Leslie Howard and Myrna Loy. Howard plays a wealthy publisher who decides to marry the socially prominent Loy, leaving his mistress Harding in the lurch. In comically convoluted fashion, Loy behaves like a callous libertine, while Harding is the soul of love and fidelity. The frustrated Howard declares at the end that he is going back to his "wife"--meaning, of course, the faithful Harding. Animal Kingdom was long withdrawn from public view due to the 1946 remake One More Tomorrow; a pristine 35-millimeter print was discovered in the Warner Bros. vaults in the mid-1980s.