Preceded by: Fred Allen's Prize Playlets directed by Murray Roth. (1929, 7 mins, B&W, 35mm) Frank Lloyd won the Academy Award as Best Director for this handsome production, notable for its naval battle scenes accompanied by sound effects of gunfire. Produced essentially as a silent film, The Divine Lady includes songs synchronized to Corinne Griffith's lip movements. Griffith, one of the great screen beauties of the 1920s, plays the equally famous beauty who scandalized England as the mistress of Lord Nelson, the heroic admiral of the fleet who challenged Napoleon and died in the Battle of Trafalgar. Griffith retired from the screen in the early 1930s. In contrast, former vaudeville headliner, musical-comedy star, and film comedienne Marie Dressler, who gives her usual strong performance here, would soon be talking on screen with Garbo in Anna Christie and Wallace Beery in Min and Bill, becoming a top box-office draw in the 1930s. --Eileen Bowser