Waterloo Bridge is a 1931 American pre-Code drama romance war film directed by James Whale and starring Mae Clarke and Kent Douglass.

Unable to find work in London at the height of World War I, American chorus girl Myra Deauville resorts to prostitution to support herself.

Robert E. Sherwood had based his play on his own wartime experiences, including a chance meeting during a 1918 air raid with an American chorus girl turned streetwalker.

Sherwood's play had evolved into a war film in the original screenplay, Benn Levy was hired to restore it to a character drama,[1] and Tom Reed provided "continuity and additional dialogue.

She was replaced by Mae Clarke, a Columbia Pictures contract player now best known to audiences as the woman whose face was the target of half a grapefruit shoved into it by James Cagney in The Public Enemy.

In 1939, MGM bought the rights to the property, and the following year released an adaptation starring Vivien Leigh and Robert Taylor and directed by Mervyn LeRoy.

[1] The 1956 film Gaby, directed by Curtis Bernhardt and starring Leslie Caron and John Kerr, advanced the story's timeline to World War II and created a happy rather than tragic ending.

After being stored in the studio vaults for 35 years, Waterloo Bridge was re-discovered in 1975, but a joint ownership agreement between MGM and Universal prevented it from being seen for another two decades.

[1][failed verification] Mordaunt Hall of The New York Times called the film "a praiseworthy picture" that "is somewhat sketchy in substance, but it is acted cleverly and there is imagination in the employment of the camera and the microphone."

"[4] Billy Wilkerson of The Hollywood Reporter wrote "It is grown up entertainment, not sophisticated, but mature ... so moving and believable as to send any audience out talking and raving in appreciation.

"[1] On December 5, 2006, Warner Home Video released the film, together with Baby Face and Red-Headed Woman, as part of a DVD box set titled TCM Archives – Forbidden Hollywood Collection, Vol.