A Lady to Love

Tony grows grapes in the Napa Valley and proposes by mail to a San Francisco waitress, enclosing a photograph of his foreman instead of himself. She comes; he breaks both legs on the wedding day; she and the foreman fall in love while he mends. Edward G. Robinson plays the Italian broadly and Victor Sjöström lets him. Vilma Banky's accent, which ended her career, is part of the character here. Sjöström's last Hollywood film and his only American talkie, from Sidney Howard's They Knew What They Wanted, with a German-language version shot alongside. MGM, 1930.