A Bill of Divorcement (1932 film)
| A Bill of Divorcement | |
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| Directed by | George Cukor |
| Produced by | David O. Selznick |
| Written by |
Clemence Dane (play) Howard Estabrook Harry Wagstaff Gribble |
| Starring |
John Barrymore Billie Burke Katharine Hepburn David Manners |
| Music by | Max Steiner |
| Cinematography | Sidney Hickox |
| Edited by | Arthur Roberts |
| Distributed by | RKO Radio Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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70 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $250,000 |
| Box office | $531,000 |
A Bill of Divorcement is a 1932 American Pre-Code drama film, directed by George Cukor and starring John Barrymore and Katharine Hepburn in her screen debut. It is based on the British play of the same name, written by Clemence Dane as a reaction to a law passed in Britain in the early 1920s that allowed insanity as grounds for a woman divorcing her husband. It was the second adaptation of the play, having previously been made into a British silent film A Bill of Divorcement in 1922.
A Bill of Divorcement describes a day in the lives of a middle-aged Englishwoman named Margaret "Meg" Fairfield (Burke); her daughter Sydney (Hepburn); Sydney's fiancée Kit Humphreys (Manners); Meg's fiancée Gray Meredith (Cavanagh); and Meg's husband Hilary (Barrymore), who escapes after spending almost twenty years in a mental hospital. After the family discusses Hilary's genetic predisposition toward psychiatric problems, which Sydney seems to have inherited, Hilary and Sydney give up Meg and Kit in order to avoid passing this trait to future generations.
The film begins on Christmas Eve as Meg gives a party in her comfortable English manor. In addition to dancing and listening to Christmas carols, Sydney and Kit happily discuss their future together, as do Meg and Gray. The only unpleasant moment of the evening occurs when the singers dedicate their performance of God Bless the Master of This House to Gray. Hilary's sister Hester objects to this because she considers Hilary to be the master of the house even though he is psychotic and institutionalized.
On Christmas morning, while Meg and Gray are at church, the asylum telephones to say that Hilary has gone missing, and Hester unintentionally reveals to Sydney that insanity runs in their family. The family's official explanation of Hilary's troubles has been that he experienced shell shock while fighting in World War I, but another family member had similar problems in the past.
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