The Greeks Had a Word for Them. 1932. USA. Directed by Lowell Sherman. Screenplay by Zoe Akins, Sidney Howard. With Joan Blondell, Madge Evans, Ina Claire. New York premiere. 80 min.
Originally conceived as a vehicle for Jean Harlow (who remained unavailable due to Howard Hughes’s contractual grip), The Greeks Had a Word for Them instead became a showcase for Broadway legend Ina Claire, whose razor-sharp comic timing elevates this tale of three mercenary showgirls navigating Manhattan’s elite social circles during the Depression.
Director and costar Lowell Sherman brings particular resonance to the material through his complex relationship with the character type he helped create. Having established the archetype of the sophisticated seducer in D. W. Griffith’s Way Down East (1920), Sherman spent the 1920s refining this “toxic bachelor” persona across numerous films. By 1932, as both performer and director, he approaches the material with an almost anthropological detachment, supplying a critical commentary on his own screen image.
The source material is a 1930 play by Zoe Akins (the original title, The Greeks Had a Word for It, was apparently too much for producer Samuel Goldwyn). One of the most successful dramatists of the interwar period, Akins would later win the Pulitzer Prize for her adaptation of Edith Wharton’s The Old Maid. She and Sherman would collaborate one last time, on the 1933 Morning Glory, which won an Oscar for Katharine Hepburn shortly before Sherman’s untimely death in 1934.
This meticulous restoration from the Library of Congress and The Film Foundation rescues the film from decades of circulation in poor-quality public domain prints (usually under the title Three Broadway Girls). Heather Linville, who supervised the restoration for the Library, will introduce the January 21 screening.
Restored by the Library of Congress and The Film Foundation, with funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.