Altars of Desire on AllMovie

Filmed through mounds of gauze, silent movie queen Mae Murray stars in MGM's Altars of Desire. Murray plays a willful American lass whose wealthy dad (Robert Edeson) sends her to Paris so that she may pick up some "refinement." Instead, she picks up a fortune-hunting nobleman, played as a frivolous fop by a monocled Andre Beranger. True-blue hero Conway Tearle prevents Murray from making a bigger fool of herself than she already is. Such was Mae Murray's reputation for temperamental tantrums that few of MGM's directors wanted anything to do with her. Thus, the studio went to the bottom of the directorial pecking order and came up with the efficient but uninspired William "Christy" Cabanne, who let Murray run amok on the set, but still came up with a releasable (and very profitable) picture.