Overlooked and underrated, this political drama from Warner Bros. needs a bit of creative viewing to take flight, but is worth it. Briefly, Governor’s daughter Barbara Stanwyck has secretly married State D.A. Warren William just as Dad gets hit with impeachment on a Cash-for-Pardon bribery scandal. Worse, she’s the sole witness on a follow-up murder that would explain everything. Yet she refuses to take the stand & testify (this murder trial is in court the next day!) because her recent marriage to William’s D.A. would make his efforts look romantically & politically tainted. Really? That’s the motivation? This idiotic idea scuttles what is otherwise an exceptionally tight & imaginative production (lensing/direction/sets : Ernst Haller/William Dieterle/Anton Grot - all three on fire). Pacey & suspenseful from the first shot, with one of those amazing four-star Warners contract player lineups of supporting character actors. So what’s behind the weak underlying motivation? See release date for a probable answer: late 1934. The film, all but certainly developed Pre-Code, now scrambling to find acceptable Post-Code substitutes for Babs non-action and reluctance to testify to save both Father and Glenda Farrell’s innocent secretary from jail . . . or worse. Our speculative guess is that the original storyline had Babs & William trysting before marriage (she spotted that murder from his bedroom - Yikes!) and now he’s insisting they keep the pre-marital affair under-cover while he works to get the charges dropped without Babs having to admit her moral disgrace and ruin Dad’s political career. Viewed this way, plot & motivation click into place with something believable at stake. Keep that in mind to get the most out of what’s otherwise a damn fine, if forgotten production.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: This entire POST a Screwy Thought, no?
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: 1934 was the year Warren William should have, but didn’t become a major studio star. With nine films, co-starring Mary Astor, Ginger Rogers, Stanwyck, Claudette Colbert (twice!), Joan Blondell & Kay Francis. Even playing Perry Mason and working under C. B. DeMille. He was even better cast in his six 1933 films where that slight sleazy factor he carried with him (and that we love him for) was more fully on display.
1 comment:
A fun WB outing, though several plot points leave one scratching one's head - Stanwyck goes into an office seeking a key witness who works there but he's gone - so she asks the secretary for his home address and it's cheerfully supplied from a box of index cards?!? As noted Warren William is always a delight even in this more upstanding 1934 role (check out The Mind Reader, '33, for but one fine example of his seedier side, playing a fake mystic).
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