Word: beals
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...imagine "Faust" and "The Devil and Daniel Webster" sloppily clad in a 20th Century plot, with Ray Milland as Beelzebub, and you get some idea of what "Alias Nick Beal" is about. And if you've heard the voice on that certain local radio station warning you "never make a dealllll with Nick Bealllll," you have the complete picture...
...Nick Beal is a guy who'll double-deal you for a nickel or fifty grand, just so long as it's good and dirty. This time his target is Joseph Foster (Thomas Mitchell), a pious D.A. who is running for Governor. Beal engineers all sorts of deals to get Foster elected, but ruins his reputation as well. And of course Foster has signed away his soul (in writing, very legal), and only saves himself at the last moment by brandishing a Bible in front of Beal's flendish face...
Dark Warehouses and Foggy Waterfronts fail to retrieve this film. Possibly Paramount signed away the soul of "Alies Nick Beal' as part of Milland's contract. If so, good riddance...
Alias Nick Beal (Paramount) is a modern morality play subtly fashioned around the text: "What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" Into the life of a gang-busting prosecutor (Thomas Mitchell) floats a mysterious character known as Nick Beal (Ray Milland). At first Beal supplies the prosecutor with evidence against a big-time gambler; then he stands at the lawyer's elbow, goading his political ambitions. By the time Mitchell has been persuaded to play ball with a corrupt, vote-powerful political machine, it is clear that...
Full Circle. Last week Fred Erwin Beal had come full circle. He returned to Gastonia to be restored to the U.S. citizenship he had lost. In the summer-hot courtroom he stood, a heavy-waisted man of 52, and told Judge Wilson Warlick earnestly: "I am one of the greatest foes of Communism in America. I would rather be an American prisoner than a free man in Russia...