Word: counsellors
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Counsellor at Law (Universal). George Simon (John Barrymore) is a talented criminal lawyer, happy in his profession but less fortunate in his home life. This set of circumstances provokes him, before the picture is over, to make a suicidal dash for the window of his deluxe office. A conservative rival has threatened to have him disbarred for framing an alibi for a petty thief ten years before. Simon has thwarted this move by discovering the rival's mistress and illegitimate child but his triumph is spoiled by the actions of Mrs. Simon (Doris Kenyon). Instead of staying with...
...full-length portrait, done with all the emphasis on unity of time and place that is currently in fashion, Counsellor at Law shows its subject against a single background, the glittering onyx and aluminum offices of Simon & Tedesco (Onslow Stevens). Playwright Elmer Rice, who adapted his own successful play, surrounded his study of Lawyer Simon with sketches of his associates and friends. Old Mrs. Simon wobbles into her son's office at odd moments, chattering in dialect. Lawyer Simon's stepchildren are nasty urchins who despise him for an illbred Jew. His secretary worships...
...Women in His Life (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). Like George Simon in Counsellor at Law, the hero of this picture, Ernest Barringer (Otto Kruger), is a criminal lawyer. However, if the two were arguing a case, the odds would be on Simon. Barringer has quick wits but he is a sentimentalist and a solitary drinker. These faults lead him into easily imagined predicaments. When a young girl (Irene Hervey) requests him to defend her father for killing her stepmother, Barringer glances at a photograph of the stepmother and utters a low neurotic moan. She is his onetime wife, whose portrait...
...Merkel) less mature, his scout and handy man (Raymond Hatton) less sly. For pleasure, Lawyer Simon likes a trip to Europe, but Lawyer Barringer goes to Miami, frequents greyhound races. Kruger acts as well as Barrymore but The Women in His Life lacks the cleverness and impact of Counsellor at Law. Good sound: Barringer's voice, hoarse with pneumonia and emotion, when he wakes up in a hospital after a drunken visit to the grave of his onetime wife...
...Evers, with a war-bullet in his chest, discovers that he has only six more months to live. The results of surgery in If I Were Free correspond with those of gun play in The Women in His Life, the final telephone call in Counsellor at Law. Good shot: Clive Brook's one gay moment, when he throws coins to a beggar and advises him to spend the afternoon begetting children...