Three Faces East (1930) is a 1930 American Pre-Code film directed by Roy Del Ruth and starring Constance Bennett and Erich von Stroheim. The film was a sound remake of the original filmed version --- a silent film titled also Three Faces East (1926). The sound version was produced by Darryl F. Zanuck and released by Warner Brothers. It is based on a 1918 Broadway play about World War I spies, "Three Faces East," by Anthony Paul Kelly (1918).
Written by Anthony Paul Kelly, this film was based on the Broadway play of the same title that opened at the Cohan and Harris Theatre, 226 W. 42nd St. on August 13, 1918 and ran for 335 performances. It also was made as a silent film: Three Faces East (1926).
Three Faces East (1930) survived complete. It was transferred into a 16mm film by Associated Artists Productions in 1956-1958 and shown on television. A 16mm copy is housed at the Wisconsin Center for Film & Theater Research. Another print exists and will be preserved at the Library of Congress.
The character of Sir Winston Chamberlain seems to be a mash-up of Winston Churchill and Neville Chamberlain. Churchill himself was First Lord of the Admiralty from 1911 to 1915 and was well-known, much more so than Chamberlain at the time of this film.
A 1926 silent adaptation of Anthony Paul Kelly's play was produced under the same title of Cecil B. DeMille. That film was directed by Rupert Julian and starred Jetta Goudal and Robert Ames. In 1940, Warner Bros. produced another adaptation of the play under the title British Intelligence (1939) adapted to take place during WWII, directed by Terry O. Morse and starring Boris Karloff and Margaret Lindsay.