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Riptide
Production: Mid December 1933 - Late Febuary 1934;
Retakes: Early March 1934;
Premiere: Late March 1934;
Released: March 30, 1934;
Production/Distribution Companies: Metro Goldwyn Mayer/Metro Goldwyn Mayer;
Runtime: 91 min;
Country: USA;
Language: English;
Color: Black and White;
Sound Mix: Mono (Western Electric Sound System);
Available on VHS;
Cast: Norma Shearer as Lady Mary Rexford; Robert Montgomery as Tommie Trent; Herbert Marshall as Lord Philip Rexford; Mrs. Patrick Campbell as Aunt Hetty Riversleigh; Skeets Gallagher as Erskine; Ralph Forbes as David Fenwick; Lilyan Tashman as Sylvia; Arthur Jarrett as Percy; Earl Oxford as Freddie; Helen Jerome Eddy as Celeste; George K. Arthur as Bertie Davis; Baby Marilyn Spinner as Pamela Rexford; Phillis Coghlan as Nurse; Howard Chaldecott as Ransome; Halliwell Hobbes as Bollard;
Production Credits:
Produced by: Irving Thalberg (offscreen);
Directed by: Edmund Goulding;
Writer: Edmund Goulding;
Gowns by: Adrian;
Editing: Margaret Booth;
Reviews:
“You will not be disappointed in Norma Shearer’s ‘comeback’ film, her first in over a year, unless you are expecting a new Norma in a highly different role. The star-sophisticate appears in very much the same silken, slightly decadent, and exquisitely accoutered characterization which has won her so much box-office acclaim in the past. In fact, if you’d just dropped in from a year in the stratosphere you would never guess that you, or Norma, had been away at all. And I don’t care how you take that. I am, unreasonably I suppose, disappointed in Riptide, although it fulfills all the requirements of a smart triangular comedy-drama, and it is beautifully acted by Miss Shearer, Herbert Marshall, as her husband, and Robert Montgomery, as a rather overgrown playboy-oh so playful-who persist in impersonating the serpent in Norma’s Garden of Eden. It must be that some unreasonableness in me that cringes a little at Mr. Montgomery’s pat-portrayal. Certainly he’s amusing enough. Miss Shearer, in those amazing Adrian creations, is always charmingly decorative, and her technique is flawless.”
Delight Evans in Screenland June 1934
“Norma Shearer is vivid and compellingly convincing as the wife who never dreams of being unfaithful until her husband’s insistent suspicions practically force her to be. Miss Shearer has an exceedingly difficult role, and she carried it gallantly and expertly.”
Photoplay May 1934
“Norma Shearer, who had the temerity to be absent herself from the screen for eighteen months sine she appeared in Smilin’ Through, is the leading light of this film, the Capitol’s present pictorial attraction. In this film, Miss Shearer and other players, including Herbert Marshall, Mrs. Patrick Campbell and Robert Montgomery, give performances that are emphatically more provocative than the story.”
Mordaunt Hall in the New York Times, March 31, 1934
“Into the capable hands of Miss Shearer, Mr. Marshall and Mr. Montgomery has been placed a luscious, sloppy gob of whimsical elfishness, and they have done their honest best with it. When Mr. Marshall asks for his little daughter to say, ‘Do I hear a little mouse somewhere?’ And when he speaks to her he calls her, ‘Such a very pink little rose.’ No dialogue writer should do that sort of thing to any actor, not even Rudy Vallee or Bing Crosby. If you want to kill an actor, kill him, but don’t annoy him.”
Cy Caldwell in New Outlook May 1934