Sadie Thompson

Sadie Thompson lands at Pago Pago, takes up with a sergeant played by the director, Raoul Walsh, and is hunted down by Lionel Barrymore's Davidson until he has broken her. Then the rain. Gloria Swanson produced Somerset Maugham's Rain under a title the Hays Office would let through and turned Davidson from a missionary into a reformer to get it made at all, and she plays the conversion scenes without a trace of piety; she was nominated for the first Academy Award for acting. The last reel is lost and is reconstructed here from stills and titles. United Artists, 1928.