Word: miscasting
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...financially, should be an embarrassment to all concerned. Its story-of a steel-worker who takes to tippling and ends up with a case of delirium tremens in a thunderstorm-is really no story at all. The dialog is atrocious. Hal Skelly gives a drivelling performance. Zita Johann is miscast. The direction is preWar. Typical shot: Skelly, drunk on two whiffs of speakeasy Scotch, staggering home to a wife who shudders at his reeking breath...
Iron Man (Universal). Lewis ("Lew") Ayres, recently voted "King of the Movies" in a poll conducted by the newspaper with the largest circulation in the U. S.,? is hopelessly miscast as a light-heavyweight fighter in a fumbled version of W. R. Burnett's novel. The novel is one of the few accurate pieces ever written about the prize ring but it has been adapted in a way that takes the life out of its characterizations, its swift exciting action. Ignoring the actual scenes of ring battles constructed by Author Burnett with so much realism, Director Tod Browning...
...power, his money, becomes a flophouse derelict, and finally dies behind a billboard, chewed by bullets from a policeman's machine-gun. Actor Robinson makes Little Caesar far more complete than Author Burnett saw him? a gangster of Greek tragedy, destroyed by the fates within him. The only miscast character is Douglas Fairbanks Jr. as a tough Italian thug. Best shot: Caesar's mob raiding a cabaret protected by a rival gang...
...trading his fraternity ring for a bottle of booze. In a whirl of misty sentiment they work out each other's salvation. In addition to other faults there is far too much talk in the picture and both principals are ludicrously miscast. These are the most serious roles Farrell & Gaynor have ever tried. The results should prove to anyone's satisfaction that the only thing they can do on the screen is what they made their reputation for-poetic comedy-dramas of young love. Most gratifying shot: exposure of the villain as a detective in the service...
...foil Max, though miscast, lives down by capable work one of these curtain speeches about "illness. . .kind consented. . .learned the part overnight" that are such a ball-and-chain on amateurism, and which were burlesqued out of sight by Beatrice Herford in "Cock Robin". Minder Sewall as Mimi, Allegra Mackay as Bianca, and Louise Piper as Hilda lift the play, but nothing like the way Ruth Bond Hill does, as Lona who spends the night before Anatol's nuptials to another chez Anatol...