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Page Twenty-six
April 16, 1938
right voice, the right personality and a lively script, one providing for a convincing use of music.”
SOME LATE PREVIEWS
MOST COMPETENT JOB . . .
# OVER THE WALL; Warners release of a Cosmopolitan production; associate producer, Bryan Foy; original screen play by Crane Wilbur and George Bricker; director, Frank MacDonald; assistant director, Jesse Hibbs; dialogue director, Jo Graham; photography by James Van Trees; film editor, Frank Magee; sound recording, Stanley Jones; art director, Esdras Hartley; gowns by Howard Shoup. Cast: Dick Foran, June Travis, John Litel, George E. Stone, Dick Purcell, Veda Ann Borg. Tommy Bupp, Robert Homans, Mabel Hart, Jimmy O'Gatty, Ward Bond.
ONE of the most consistently good bits of screen entertainment I have seen in a long time; class B as to budget, class A as to brains, and not a moment when it is not engrossing. Frank McDonald was handed a competently written screen play and gave it direction which developes all its values. The story is a psychological study with dramatic trimmings. McDonald makes it so gripping, so human, so sym¬ pathetic, we are not conscious of the study angle of it, not aware that a basically cold human problem is being solved before our eyes. Dick Foran is a fight¬ ing roughneck, a bully, unreasonable, incorrigible, a believer in the doctrine of fists as the determining factor in any difference of opinion. Innocent victim of a frame-up, he lands in the state penitentiary and becomes its most unruly, most rebellious inmate. John Litel is the prison chaplain. Quiet, pleasant, tolerant, determined, he is the precise opposite of Foran. He senses the latent good in the unruly pris¬ oner, patiently delves for it and finally brings it to the surface. Litel, representing normal society; Foran, representing intolerance, social abnormalities, personi¬ fy the conflicting elements which constitute the story.
Litel's Brilliant Performance . . .
OVERLOOK this picture because you deem it un¬ important and you will deny yourself a rare treat which it provides in the performance of John Litel. Seldom has the screen presented us with a character study so mechanically simple and so spiritually pow¬ erful, one which is so completely human yet so rich in Christlike quality. There is nothing effeminate in Litel’s chaplain; he, too, has fists, one of which in the opening sequence comes violently into contact with Foran’s chin, much to the consternation and chagrin of that young man. Litel has everything the public likes and could become one of the big boxoffice stars if some producer had gumption enough to give him the opportunity. Foran is the perfect op¬ posite for Litel in Over The Wall. He comes through with what appeals to me as his best performance to date. At the outset the unreasoning bully, the in¬ herent charm of his personality kept him from be¬ coming wholly unsympathetic even when making an ass of himself. McDonald realized the importance of sustaining the audience’s interest in Foran to the
WESLEY RUGGLES Hopes There Will he Many Other Dozens to Follow the Spectator’s First Dozen Years
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