The role of Emma was tailor-made for Marie Dressler, one of Hollywood's greatest treasures. And she jumps into it with both feet as the nanny to the Smith children and then as their step-mother after marrying their widowed father, played by Jean Hersholt. She plays the part to a tee and wrings every ounce of laughs and tears out of her role, a tour-de-force for this old trouper.
Good support cast headed by Hersholt and by Myrna Loy in a thankless role as a spoiled kid/woman and Richard Cromwell in a favorable role here (3 years later he would get Gary Cooper killed in a wimpy part in "Lives of a Bengal Lancer"). But it's Dressler who makes the picture work by the magnetism and charisma of her screen presence. She made 4 subsequent pictures before she was taken from us too soon. "Emma" is a good but not great film held together by Marie.
7/10 ******* - website no longer prints my star rating.
Good support cast headed by Hersholt and by Myrna Loy in a thankless role as a spoiled kid/woman and Richard Cromwell in a favorable role here (3 years later he would get Gary Cooper killed in a wimpy part in "Lives of a Bengal Lancer"). But it's Dressler who makes the picture work by the magnetism and charisma of her screen presence. She made 4 subsequent pictures before she was taken from us too soon. "Emma" is a good but not great film held together by Marie.
7/10 ******* - website no longer prints my star rating.