by Allan Fish
(USA 1932 86m) not on DVD
A chain of circumstantial evidence
p Lucien Hubbard d James Flood, Elliott Nugent w Joseph Jackson, Earl Baldwin ph Barney McGill ed George Amy m Bernard Kaun art Esdras Hartley cos Earl Luick
Warren William (Vincent Day), Sidney Fox (Celia Farraday), Aline MacMahon (Miss Hickey), John Wray (Barton), Mae Madison (Elaine), Ralph Ince (J.B.Roscoe), Guy Kibbee (bartender), Stanley Fields (boxer), J.Carrol Naish (Tony Rocco), Murray Kinnell (Thompson), Walter Walker (D.A.Forbes), William Janney (Johnny Morris), Morgan Wallace (E.A.Smith), Charles Lane (hotel clerk), Berton Churchill (judge),
Gentlemen of the jury, my case is simple. The accused is an actor too long dismissed as lightweight by serious film buffs. It’s true, he was miscast as Julius Caesar in de Mille’s Cleopatra – but he’s hardly the only person to have been so miscast by C.B., this is the man who cast Jean Arthur as Calamity Jane – and he was later relegated to the somewhat interminable Lone Wolf series. Yet let it not be forgotten, Cary Grant has such disasters as Madame Butterfly, None but the Lonely Heart and Night and Day on his C.V., while Bogart had The Return of Dr X, The Oklahoma Kid (as vampire and cowboy respectively) and The Two Mrs Carrolls. To come to the crux of the matter, Warren William is one of the most unjustly overlooked figures in pre-code cinema and one who needs to be reclaimed.
The first words he speaks in The Mouthpiece are the same four words as begin this entry. He’s a hotshot D.A.’s assistant charged with taking an open and shut murder case and getting a conviction. He gets the conviction and the young defendant is sentenced to Old Juicy, but then the real killer is apprehended it’s too late to stop the execution. Guilt-ridden, he resigns and gives up his job to defend innocent people. When there prove to be few of them he is cajoled into representing the guilty as the most successful mob mouthpiece in New York. Everything goes swimmingly – money, society women, the occasional sampling from the stenographer pool – until one such piece of jailbait, Celia, attracts his attention. He falls for her but she doesn’t want him, preferring instead her young beau Johnny. When Johnny gets framed for a robbery he takes his case for Celia, but finds that to do so will cross the mob he himself is a tool of.
From those wonderful, care-free days before the code, this is another gem of the Warner production line too long tossed aside in favour of brighter but more puerile entertainments. Take one scene where he gets an embezzler off by legally conning his employer out of $10,000. “You’re an unmitigated scoundrel”, he is told. “Thank you”, he smiles in response, “but I find it much better than being an ordinary one.” In a later scene, he’s once again beholden to the far-sighted efforts of his cynical secretary (who secretly loves him). “To make you fall in love with me, what else would it take?” she says. “A magician”, he replies, closing the door behind him before she has chance to tell him to “go to hell.” Further pleasure can be had with the choice euphemisms, such as being in ‘consultation’ (essentially the same as what Sid James would later call ‘Tiffin’’), and with the supporting cast, with the inimitable Fields as a boxer with a glass jaw, Kibbee as a barman, Wray as the embezzler sent off and told to throw himself in the river (he’d later be back to point a gun at Longfellow Deeds), Naish as one of his excitable Italian-Americans who William gets off, and the delectable ingénue Fox (who sadly committed suicide a decade later). Best of all, there’s Aline MacMahon, once again the sidekick who knows the protagonist better than she knows herself. Holding all at bay, there’s William, in the best exhibit for the defence against his neglect, with that sub-Barrymore profile. It isn’t a perfect film, and while Roy del Rush would probably have brought it in at eight reels rather than nine, it’s still a vibrant example of a soon to be lost adult school of drama, brave enough to leave his fate up the viewer in the fadeout. Savour, too, the visual illustration of the failed reprieve, as the lights dim after the switches are pulled; “it’s too late”, the D.A. murmurs putting the phone down, “I could hear the hum of the juice over the wire.”
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Well Allan, this exquisite and utterly original opening constitutes one of your best for any review you’ve ever written at this site. Bravo!
It’s really dead-on too contexually, as William is one of the most sadly neglected actors in the history of American cinema. I just last month was treated to multiple appearances by William in virtually all or most of his major features during this period. It included the gem you review here, THE MIND READER, SKYSCRAPER SOULS, UPPER WORLD and BEAUTY AND THE BOSS and then the masterpiece GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933 for good measure! I guess narrowly (excluding GOLD DIGGERS, which William didn’t play top billing) I liked THE MIND READER best, but THE MOUTHPIECE pushes real close, and your banner review spells out the glowing reasons.
Kind words, old boy, but I don’t think it’s that great actually, a little bit obvious, and I think the last paragraph is easily the best. All depends how it flows. Though you miss out William’s Dave the Dude in Lady for a Day as well, a wonderfully generous performance.
No way is that opening paragraph one of Allan’s best as it uses his ‘grossly’ overused phrase of ‘serious film buffs’. Didn’t you know?
In all seriousness, this is a good piece, and I’ll be seeing this soon, just obtained a copy.
A great piece, Allan, and I must agree that Warren William is too often overlooked. You’ve picked out some sharp lines of dialogue here, and, as you say, Aline MacMahon is excellent as the loyal secretary – there’s a wonderful scene where she goes to pick William up practically out of the gutter after one of his drunken binges. I also like Sidney Fox, who is good in ‘Midnight’ with Bogart.
This film has a lot of similarities with ‘State’s Attorney’ , with John Barrymore playing a similar role as a drunken lawyer who uses outrageous tricks in the courtroom – I’ve read that both characters were based on the same real-life original, lawyer Bill Fallon. Just tried to check which of these was made first, but I see they were both released in May 1932, so who knows?
Difficult to tell, I know Warners shooting to release time window varied generally from 3 months to nearly a year (some like Kings Row and Arsenic and Old Lace a lot more).
Not a fan of that Midnight, though it’s not completely awful it’s well on the journey to it.
It’s no great masterpiece, but I thought she was pretty good in it.Better than The Bad Sister, anyway.
Excellent timing here, because I just watched Gold Diggers of ’33 again last night. I was struck by how well William, an actor I’m not all that familiar with, managed to be both a sort of “straight man” to the cunning showgirls and something of a romantic lead (so that we actually believe he and Blondell would be in love by the end). Not an easy feat, that.
If someone told me if I was on Death Row that I could pick any musical to watch over and over until they flicked the switch I’d pick Gold Diggers of 1933. It may quite match LMT or SITR, but it’s my favourite by far.
For what it’s worth William does in fact get top billing in GD of 33. That said, can we really say at this point that Warren William is a neglected pre code figure? Virtually any recent pre code retrospective has a ton of his stuff in it and The Mouthpiece may well be his best starring vehicle. In fact I might put it #2 among Warners output in 1932 behind only I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang.
My favorite scene in this? Gotta be the jaw dropping scene where he literally drinks poison in court…and gets his stomach pumped immediately after his client is acquitted!