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The Shadow of the Silents – A Lady to Love 121
languages became a general strategy, not least by MGM, but this still didn’t
resolve the problem with accents. 6 The third central role, as Buck, was created
by Robert Ames in the English version and Joseph Schildkraut in the German.
Three of the minor roles also had different actors in the English and German
versions. (FIG. 22)
Fig. 22: Production still from the German version of A Lady to Love, with Victor
Sjöström as photographer.
Immediately before A Lady to Love, Banky had made her first appearance in a
sound film, a romantic comedy called This Is Heaven, directed by Alfred Santell
in 1929. Donald Crafton gives account for the debates surrounding its release,
where Samuel Goldwyn had chose to highlight his star’s accent, casting
her as an immigrant girl, instead of trying to hide it, but still became uncertain
as to whether the dialogue was acceptable. At first, it was eliminated, only to be
put back again after a test screening. In the trade press, the film was advertised
as bound to be a hit:
That’s going to be glad news to millions of Vilma Banky’s following. Her beauty and
her marvellous work on the screen has won friends wherever her pictures have