Paid to Love. 1927. USA. Directed by Howard Hawks. With George O’Brien, Virginia Valli, William Powell, J. Farrell MacDonald. 35mm. 76 min.
American banker J. Farrell MacDonald tries to bring financial stability to a Balkan kingdom by finding a suitable girlfriend for the country’s shy prince (George O’Brien); a Parisian nightclub performer (Virginia Valli) gets the job while the prince’s caddish cousin (William Powell) looks for an opening. Lubitsch seems to be Hawks’s model this time, though he isn’t yet up to handling the modulations between comedy and drama. Preservation funded by the Celeste Bartos Fund For Film Preservation. Organ accompaniment by Ben Model.