RKO's The Animal Kingdom capitalized on the success of a previous Philip Barry adaptation, Holiday (see January 3); Ann Harding again starred, Edward H. Griffith again directed, and once again the witty script was true to Barry's original. Leslie Howard repeated his Broadway success in the role of a nonconformist, intellectual publisher who is wed to the demanding Myrna Loy, but drawn to his one-time mistress, Harding, and refuses to concede that he can't carry on two “marriages.” As the original Variety review notes, “Torrid sex stuff suavely treated.”
This criticaly and financially successful motion picture was withdrawn from circulation when the rights were sold in 1946 for a remake. Over the years, it joined the ranks of “lost” films until last year, when film historian Ronald Havor discovered the original picture and track negative, which became the basis for the UCLA Film Archives' preserved print.