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24
THE MOTION PICTURE DIRECTOR
February
Montagu Love, Dorothy Devore and John Patrick in the Warner Bros. Classic, Leave It to Me, directed by William Beaudine.
(Bill Beaudine says
OVER at Warner Bros, a neat little “job” in the matter of a crook movie has been “pulled off” by William Beaudine. Phil Klein and E. T. Lowe hatched the plot by adapting Darryl Francis Zanuck’s story, whereupon “Beau” assembled such notorious characters as John Mescall, Gene Anderson, George Webster, “Briny” Foy, and Bert Shipman to aid and abet him in filming, with Dorothy Devore, John Patrick, Montagu Love, George Pearce, Lynn Cowan, Russell Simpson, James Gordon, Frank Brownlee, Fred Kelsey, Charles Hill Mailes, and others, Warner Bros, production of “Leave It To Me.”
The conventional “crook picture” deals with gobs and gobs of underworld people in the big city, virtuous lady crooks who reform, big-hearted gent crooks who do the same, faithful “dopes” who get “clunked” in the last reel to everybody’s sorrow after saving something or somebody, etc.
There isn’t a big city, a “dope,” a crook, male or female, who reforms, a mean, nasty detective, a pair of handcuffs, a den, a poolroom, a “fence,” or a secret passageway in “Leave It To Me.” Nobody gets pois
oned, or shot, or stabbed, or what is worse — converted.
Ninety-five percent of the picture was taken on location in woodsy places or little towns. It is a picture of the great outdoors “where men are men,” yet it is a crook picture. As a rule the heroine and hero are promising young crooks doing a flourishing trade in crime — not really bad crime — quite chivalrous and respectable in fact. When they meet, their consciences smite them both simultaneously and they begin to long to set each other on the straight and narrow way.
In “Leave It To Me” the procedure is reversed. The young gentleman (of the press, by the way), and the young lady start out perfectly respectable. Circumstance intervenes and brings them together — to impress each other with their wickedness and their bold, bad exploits.
Up to the very denouement of one of the most delightfully interesting tangles seen upon the screen in years, they have each other convinced of their sinfulness. These of course are John and Dorothy. But there are a couple of honest-to
goodness crooks, consistently crooked and proud of it, who serve to liven things up considerably. The big master-brain who is responsible from the first for so much humorous activity, Dr. R. Rappaport Runyon, alias Ducket Nelson, is splendidly charactrized by Montagu Love. Frank Brownlee makes an admirable convict, better than would ninety-eight per cent of those now enjoying the hospitality of our penal institutions.
“Leave It To Me” is a light, swiftly moving comedy-drama wonderfully well suited to the talents not only of Miss Devore and Mr. Beaudine, a working team of long standing, but to those of John Patrick. For Patrick it is the chance for which every picture actor and actress hopes and prays. His star as a comedian has been hanging brightly well above the horizon, giving great promise, but from “Leave It To Me” on just leave it to John. His star is scheduled by this particular astronomer to rise higher and shine brighter at an increasingly steady rate.