He decided to give up on Madge after bringing compromise between the workers and management.Both of the main stars in the film were at different stages in their careers:Richard Barthelmess, a 37 year-old (playing a 23 year-old), was a silent-screen star who played the role of a sharecropper""s son - it was the last significant role of his careerBette Davis, a 24 year-old in a breakthrough early role as blonde, slim and promiscuous Madge; it was the first in a string of performances as a strong, conniving and wily sexually-appealing Southern female, just before her similarly memorable performance inOf Human Bondage (1934)as blonde, lower-class, pale and anemic, coarse, trashy, slatternly and vulgar, Cockney-accented, pale-faced and illiterate tearoom waitress Mildred RogersAlthough Davis played the role of the sizzling, vampish Southern female with ease, she later admitted that she was a virgin, and was surprised that she had acquired the role." Rhetorically, he next title card asks:In this scarlet house of sin, does he ever hear he temple bells?Chinese addicts gamble together, consulting: "Fantan, he Goddess of Chance.The dark and frightening one ofPinocchiohas often been studied.PlayboyMagazine (August 1993 edition), in a boxed section titled "Raw Data" on page 16, reported on the film in a brief blurb titled: "PINOCCH, WE NEVER KNEW YE.But after various screen tests, Lugosi refused the part, and Universal chose Britisher James Whale to direct.