Director: ARCHIE MAYO. Screenplay: Tom Reed and Niven Busch. Based on the stage play The Dark Tower by George S. Kaufman and Alexander Woollcott. Photography: Tony Gaudio. Film editor: William Holmes. Art director: John Hughes. Music: Bernard Kaun. Music director: Leo F. Forbstein, conducting The Vitaphone Orchestra. Songs: "Stormy Weather" (Clarke) by Harold Arlen (music) and Ted Koehler (lyrics); "Am I Blue?" by Harry Akst (music) and Grant Clarke (lyrics). Producer: Robert Lord.
Copyright 14 July 1934 by First National Pictures, Inc. Released through Warner Brothers Pictures, Inc. New York opening at the Strand: 11 July 1934. U.K. release: 30 March 1935. Australian release: 5 December 1934. 72 minutes.
SYNOPSIS: A black-hearted confidence trickster (Louis Calhern) exerts an unbreakable hypnotic influence over his actress wife (Mary Astor).
NOTES: The stage play opened on Broadway at the Morosco on 25 November 1933, and, despite excellent reviews, ran a very middling 57 days. "It was a tremendous success," claimed co-author Woollcott, "except for the minor detail that people wouldn't come to see it!"
The cast included Basil Sydney (as Damon Wells), Margalo Gilmore, William Harrigan, Margaret Hamilton, Leona Maricle, Margaret Dale, Ernest Milton and Porter Hall. (Sydney also headed the London cast, opposite Edna Best, Martita Hunt, Francis L. Sullivan and Frith Banbury). Sam H. Harris produced, authors Woollcott and Kaufman directed.
COMMENT: Here's Edward G. Robinson in his element once more, this time playing a hammy actor who impersonates a French impresario. In the movie, this disguise is supposed to be wholly convincing to the other players, but Ed didn't ring true to me — not for a single second.
Mind you, some critics excused Robinson's performance on the grounds that the audience was supposed to be in on the "joke" from the start. But whether the hollowness of the deception was deliberate or not, I still think the movie would have been more entertainingly suspenseful if Robinson and his make-up men had tried a little harder.
After all, I have just seen an extremely modest Jack Perrin movie, "Hair-Trigger Casey" (1936), in which a little-known support person named Edward Cassidy manages to bring off an extremely successful transformation, thanks not only to his own histrionic talent but the skills of Poverty Row studio technicians.
True, Archie Mayo's direction is more than several notches ahead of all but the most stylish "B" personnel, and the support rendered by actors of the caliber of chillingly realistic Mary Astor and suavely evil Louis Calhern (one of his best performances ever) leaves most second-rated players for dead.
Ricardo Cortez, however, is wasted in a nothing role, though it is nice to see him enact the good guy for a change. Mae Clarke spends the movie stooging for Edward G., but does get a chance to warble a few notes from "Stormy Weather".
Despite its missed opportunities, "The Man with Two Faces" still provides a reasonable modicum of "A"-grade pleasures. TCM deserves a round of applause just for scheduling this picture.
Copyright 14 July 1934 by First National Pictures, Inc. Released through Warner Brothers Pictures, Inc. New York opening at the Strand: 11 July 1934. U.K. release: 30 March 1935. Australian release: 5 December 1934. 72 minutes.
SYNOPSIS: A black-hearted confidence trickster (Louis Calhern) exerts an unbreakable hypnotic influence over his actress wife (Mary Astor).
NOTES: The stage play opened on Broadway at the Morosco on 25 November 1933, and, despite excellent reviews, ran a very middling 57 days. "It was a tremendous success," claimed co-author Woollcott, "except for the minor detail that people wouldn't come to see it!"
The cast included Basil Sydney (as Damon Wells), Margalo Gilmore, William Harrigan, Margaret Hamilton, Leona Maricle, Margaret Dale, Ernest Milton and Porter Hall. (Sydney also headed the London cast, opposite Edna Best, Martita Hunt, Francis L. Sullivan and Frith Banbury). Sam H. Harris produced, authors Woollcott and Kaufman directed.
COMMENT: Here's Edward G. Robinson in his element once more, this time playing a hammy actor who impersonates a French impresario. In the movie, this disguise is supposed to be wholly convincing to the other players, but Ed didn't ring true to me — not for a single second.
Mind you, some critics excused Robinson's performance on the grounds that the audience was supposed to be in on the "joke" from the start. But whether the hollowness of the deception was deliberate or not, I still think the movie would have been more entertainingly suspenseful if Robinson and his make-up men had tried a little harder.
After all, I have just seen an extremely modest Jack Perrin movie, "Hair-Trigger Casey" (1936), in which a little-known support person named Edward Cassidy manages to bring off an extremely successful transformation, thanks not only to his own histrionic talent but the skills of Poverty Row studio technicians.
True, Archie Mayo's direction is more than several notches ahead of all but the most stylish "B" personnel, and the support rendered by actors of the caliber of chillingly realistic Mary Astor and suavely evil Louis Calhern (one of his best performances ever) leaves most second-rated players for dead.
Ricardo Cortez, however, is wasted in a nothing role, though it is nice to see him enact the good guy for a change. Mae Clarke spends the movie stooging for Edward G., but does get a chance to warble a few notes from "Stormy Weather".
Despite its missed opportunities, "The Man with Two Faces" still provides a reasonable modicum of "A"-grade pleasures. TCM deserves a round of applause just for scheduling this picture.