The Divorcee (1930) - Robert Z. Leonard

Norma Shearer earned an Academy Award for playing the not so gay divorcée in this pre-Code offering based, loosely, on Ex-Wife, a 1929 Ursula Parrott novel. Shearer is Jerry, a socialite who marries handsome Ted (Chester Morris) after a whirlwind courtship. But Ted is not exactly the faithful type and after three years of what she in her naïveté considered marital bliss, Jerry learns of his affair with Janice (Mary Doran). "It meant nothing," Ted assures her but Jerry is devastated and decides to investigate adultery for herself by sleeping with Ted's best friend, Don (Robert Montgomery). When she discovers that the old double-standard still applies, Jerry announces that henceforth Ted, and only Ted, is no longer welcome in her bed. After a string of lovers who mean little or nothing to her, Jerry falls for an old flame, Paul (Conrad Nagel), but when she understands the effect their affair has on Paul's poor disfigured wife, Dorothy (Helen Johnson, aka Judith Wood), Jerry returns to Ted, who still loves her despite it all. (Hans J. Wollstein @ allrovi.com)

Review:
Recently The Divorcée, in general, and Norma Shearer's performance, in particular, have garnered quite a bit of attention from an ever-increasing group of pre-Code devotees. But in order to find anything worthwhile in what, to all extent and purposes, is a rather stolid, and stolidly acted, marital drama, you will have to contend with all the trappings of early talkies – including rather lah-di-dah "upper class" accents and a soundtrack that tends to drown out the more intimate details. Shearer is alternately delightfully wry and silly but her leading men, with the exception perhaps of a very young Robert Montgomery, make for less than exiting company, especially the charisma-deficient Conrad Nagel, who seems to have popped up in every other Hollywood drama of 1930. ((Hans J. Wollstein @ allrovi.com)