| The Right to Romance | |
| Director: | Alfred Santell |
| Producer: | Merian C. Cooper |
| Story: | Myles Connolly |
| Screenplay: | Sidney Buchman Henry McCarty |
| Starring: | Ann Harding Robert Young Nils Asther |
| Music: | Max Steiner |
| Cinematography: | Lucien Andriot |
| Editing: | Ralph Dietrich |
| Studio: | RKO Radio Pictures |
| Distributor: | RKO Radio Pictures |
| Runtime: | 65, 67 or 70 minutes |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
The Right to Romance is a 1933 American pre-Code drama film starring Ann Harding and Robert Young and released by RKO Radio Pictures.
A successful plastic surgeon meets a local playboy and impulsively marries him.
This is one of the "lost RKO films" owned by Merian C. Cooper and only re-released in April 2007 when Turner Classic Movies acquired the rights and showed all six films on TCM.
Cooper accused RKO of not paying him all the money contractually due for the films he produced in the 1930s. A settlement was reached in 1946, giving Cooper complete ownership of six RKO titles:
According to an interview with a retired RKO executive, shown as a promo on TCM, Cooper withdrew the films, only allowing them to be shown on television in 1955–1956 in New York City.
In 2006, Turner Classic Movies, which had acquired the rights to the six films after extensive legal negotiations, broadcast them on TCM in April 2007, their first full public exhibition in over 70 years. TCM, in association with the Library of Congress and the Brigham Young University Motion Picture Archive, had searched many film archives throughout the world to find copies of the films in order to create new 35mm prints.[1] [2] [3]