One Sunday Afternoon | |
---|---|
Swedish theatrical release poster
|
|
Directed by | Stephen R. Roberts |
Produced by | Louis D. Lighton |
Screenplay by | |
Based on |
One Sunday Afternoon 1933 play by James Hagan |
Starring | |
Music by | John Leipold |
Cinematography | |
Edited by | Ellsworth Hoagland |
Production
company |
|
Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
Release date
|
|
Running time
|
85 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
One Sunday Afternoon is a 1933 American Pre-Code romantic comedy film directed by Stephen R. Roberts and starring Gary Cooper and Fay Wray. Based on the 1933 Broadway play by James Hagan, the film is about a middle-aged dentist who reminisces about his unrequited love for a beautiful woman and his former friend who betrayed him and married her. This pre-Code film was released by Paramount Pictures on September 1, 1933.
Dr. Lucius Griffith "Biff" Grimes (Gary Cooper) is a small town dentist dissatisfied with his lot. Though married to the lovely and affectionate Amy Lind Grimes (Frances Fuller), Grimes still carries a torch for his former sweetheart, Virginia "Virgie" Brush Barnstead (Fay Wray). Years earlier, Grimes had lost Virgie to his old friend Hugo Barnstead (Neil Hamilton), and is consumed with the desire to get even with his rival. The now-wealthy Hugo comes to visit Grimes, with Virgie in town. Grimes then seeks to rekindle his old romance.
The picture was remade twice by director Raoul Walsh, as the smash hit Strawberry Blonde (1941) with James Cagney and again as One Sunday Afternoon (1948). The Gary Cooper version was a notorious flop, however, and the only Cooper picture of this period to lose money at the box office. Before making the Cagney version, Jack L. Warner (co-founder of Warner Bros. who had bought the 1933 version) screened the 1933 film and wrote a memo to his production head Hal B. Wallis telling him to watch it also: "It will be hard to stay through the entire running of the picture, but do this so you will know what not to do."