Review:The Divorce of Lady X, 1938

A lot of fizzy froth in this romantic comedy about faked identity and the humorous side of a rather advanced case of misogyny. Laurence Olivier is an attorney in London who is a veteran of divorce trials, and one night returning to the city while it is engulfed with a fog thick enough to spawn a dozen 1930's Universal monster movies he has to take refuge in a luxury hotel to wait it out.

The place is swarming with guests in the hotel's huge ballroom where an elaborate costume party is taking place but now they are all marooned in the building due to the weather. With rooms all occupied and too many extra people on their hands, the management tries to get the attorney to allow some of the roomless women from the party to take up sleeping quarters in the well furnished outer room of his two room suite, but he'll have none of it. With a pitiless refusal to help out, complaining he hasn't slept for two days and is facing another long hard day at his office the next morning, he throws out the manager who now has to tell the dozen desperate ladies in the hall that there's no space for them here.

Merle Oberon, in an outfit that looks like it was tailored for Gone with the Wind, won't take "no" for an answer and once the coast is clear pushes her way into the suite. Between fast talking and manipulation she convinces the attorney to give up his outer room to her, and then pressing her advantage she ends up in control of the bedroom and wearing his pajamas, while Larry Olivier ends up sleeping unhappily on the floor in the outer room in a robe.

Part battle of the sexes and part just a playground for witty dialogue (script by Lajos Biro, Ian Dalrymple, Arthur Wimperis, Gilbert Wakefield, and Robert E. Sherwood), The Divorce of Lady X has Olivier and Oberon using up most of the screen time burning through a lot of physical energy and at times spitting out reams of bantering dialogue that zips by almost like confetti because the print I saw of the film (from the Classic Reel streaming service) looked good but had iffy audio. I'm assuming the stuff I couldn't quite catch was as good as what I did, and in that regard the film is a first rank comedy, part screwball but much more British (it is an Alexander Korda production, after all).

The Divorce of Lady X is a gorgeous film with peculiar shortcomings. For example the first half of the film seems to be all indoor sets, well decorated and colored pleasantly for this Technicolor production, but strangely many of the doorways and windows reveal all to easily this is actually a film set, such as primitive looking matte paintings in the background for the faked exteriors. When the film finally gets over its stage-like appearance we get some fabulous on location castle and fox-hunting scenes, plus a general expansion of the visual story with scenery to match as the bizarre prank played by Oberon's character on the misogynist Olivier character deepens. It is almost as if the film was shot chronologically and whoever was holding the purse strings liked what was developing so much they started really spending on opening up the visuals and getting away from the boxed rooms with people talking fast but closed up into small spaces.

There's not many bass notes in this light-hearted fare, though batting around a constant chat about divorce, implied adultery, and what it is that drives men and women to love each other gives it ample places to show a serious moment: it doesn't quite pull it off.

Binnie Barnes and Ralph Richardson are on hand and fill out the funny quite well, particularly Ralph Richardson getting drunk and repeating his lines over and over, ruminating on what he thinks everything means about his relationship with his wife when in fact he's just getting drunker in his misery because they're not getting along. In a way the message of The Divorce of Lady X seems to be that the sexes could get along better if they'd just want to do so and put a little effort into it.

Original page May 2026