The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934 film)
The Barretts of Wimpole Street is a 1934 American romantic drama film directed by Sidney Franklin based on the 1930 play of the same title by Rudolf Besier. It depicts the real-life romance between poets Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, despite the opposition of her abusive father Edward Moulton-Barrett. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture and Shearer was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. It was written by Ernest Vajda, Claudine West, and Donald Ogden Stewart, from the successful 1930 play The Barretts of Wimpole Street by Rudolf Besier, and starring Katharine Cornell.
Theatrical release poster
Norma Shearer, Maureen O'Sullivan, and Charles Laughton in The Barretts of Wimpole Street
Film still with Norma Shearer and Fredric March.
Edith Norma Shearer was a Canadian-American actress who was active on film from 1919 through 1942. Shearer often played spunky, sexually liberated women. She appeared in adaptations of Noël Coward, Eugene O'Neill, and William Shakespeare, and was the first five-time Academy Award acting nominee, winning Best Actress for The Divorcee (1930).
Shearer in Riptide (1934)
Portrait of Shearer by Arnold Genthe, c. 1920
Norma Shearer's strabismus, 1926
Shearer in an early MGM publicity photo