Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
Madeleine Carroll | ... | Mrs. Warburton, 1825 / Mary Warburton Girard, 1914 | |
Franchot Tone | ... | Richard Girard - 1825 / Richard Girard - 1914 | |
Reginald Denny | ... | Erik von Gerhardt | |
Sig Ruman | ... | Baron von Gerhardt (as Siegfried Rumann) | |
Louise Dresser | ... | Baroness von Gerhardt | |
Raul Roulien | ... | Carlos Girard (1825) / Henri Girard (1914) | |
Stepin Fetchit | ... | Dixie | |
Lumsden Hare | ... | Gabriel Warburton (1825) / Sir John Warburton (1914) | |
Dudley Digges | ... | Mr. Manning | |
Frank Melton | ... | John Girard (1825) | |
Brenda Fowler | ... | Madame Agnes Girard (1825) | |
Russell Simpson | ... | Notary (1825) | |
Walter McGrail | ... | The Duallist (1825) | |
Marcelle Corday | ... | Madame Girard II (1914) | |
Charles Bastin | ... | Jacques Girard, the Boy (1914) |
Richard Girard is part of a New Orleans family working closely with the English Warburtons. When Richard meets Mary Warburton she is engaged to Erik von Gerardt. He does wed Mary but their time in America is financially difficult.
In the tradition of Fox Studios' Oscar-winning Cavalcade, The World Moves On covers over one hundred years in the lives of two Louisiana families: The Girards, of French extraction, and the Warburtons, formerly of Manchester. Forming an alliance by marriage in 1825, the families rapidly corner the cotton business in the South. Years later, three of Girard/Warburton sons split up to head business operations in England, France and Germany: as a result, descendants of the original families find themselves fighting on opposite sides during WW I (this episode is similar to a memorable sequence in the 1928 silent Four Sons, which like World Moves On was directed by John Ford). Surviving the war, Richard (Franchot Tone), the last of the descendants becomes a sharkish Wall Street speculator in the 1920s, ultimately losing his fortune in the Wall Street Crash. Bloody but unbowed, Richard and his wife Mary (Madeleine Carroll) cut their losses and return to their ancestral home, to start all over again. Both The World Moves On and the subsequent Fox production Road to Glory rely to a considerable extent upon stock footage from the grim 1931 French antiwar drama Wooden Crosses.