Peacock Alley (DVD)

Beautiful cabaret singer Claire Tree has been conducting an affair with millionaire Stoddard Clayton. Although the two are desperately in love, Clayton refuses to marry, citing the institution as the great destroyer of romance. The house detective observes Claire entering Clayton's posh suite in the fashionable Peacock Alley district and leaving at dawn. Inside the room, the couple has been debating the marriage issue all night, and when no proposal is forthcoming, Claire announces she is marrying lawyer Jim Bradbury the very next day, and storms out into the morning. Jim and Claire are wed but the groom has unknowingly booked a room in the same hotel where Clayton resides. The honeymoon night is interrupted when the hotel detective bursts in implying that he has evidence that Claire is a prostitute, and that they must vacate immediately!

A star of the Zeigfield Follies by 1915, Mae Murray,"the girl with the bee-stung lips," had a sophisticated dance act which played the top night clubs of Paris and the U.S. paired with partners that included Rudolph Valentino and John Gilbert. She became a top star for MGM in the silent era best remembered for A Mormon Maid (1917), The Delicious Little Devil (1919) and The Merry Widow (1925).

• drama