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Monday, June 22, 2020

THE PUBLIC DEFENDER (1931)

R.K.O. may have been thinking of starting up a series on this one. So why the generic title instead of THE RECKONER, its undercover revenge-minded leading character? Still a dandy idea, and not a bad Early Talkie. For silent film star Richard Dix, still gingerly adjusting to Talk, it was just one of eight films in 1931*, including the epic hit CIMARRON. He’s a sort of modern Robin Hood, striking the rich to bring justice to the less rich! Really more Batman/Equalizer sans costume, mask & gizmos; independently rich playboy by day/‘The Reckoner’ by night!; bringing down bad guys with help from agile assistants Paul Hirst & Boris Karloff. Tonight’s episode finds him helping an innocent bank officer set up by his four embezzling partners. Find the missing documents behind the scam and Dix frees the victimized exec while also winning eternal gratitude from his lovely, available daughter, Shirley Grey. (Grey making a blah debut in a short but busy five-year career.) It’s exceptionally well-shot by Edward Cronjager, especially in a wordless little theft sequence, but held back by a journeyman script & J. Walter Ruben’s spotty direction. Good fun all the same.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Note Boris Karloff as one of The Reckoner’s helpers, just one of fourteen roles this year, including FRANKENSTEIN.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Dix never matched his silent film status, but kept working almost to the end. His best probably came during David O. Selznick’s brief run as R.K.O. head-of-production: THE LOST SQUADRON/’32, a post-WWI flyboy-goes-Hollywood thriller with Dix leading Mary Astor, Robert Armstrong, Dorothy Jordan & Joel McCrea against Erich von Stroheim’s sadistic film director.

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