Night Club Scandal

John Barrymore goes out to give a speech. His wife, suffering from a headache, stays home.... but she's well enough to play the piano as he bids the desk clerk good night. When he returns home, however, she is dead, murdered, and in comes police detective Charles Bickford, crime reporter Lynn Overman, and the usual crowd of suspicious suspects, including J. Carrol Naish, Evelyn Brent, and Wlizabeth Patterson.

It's a remake of the pre-code GUILTY AS HELL; that was remarkable only for Karl's Struss's camerawork, a decently executed locked-room mystery. Erle Kenton directed both versions. This one has Bickford angry about everything all the time; this leave Overman to figure out whodunnit. Some of the pre-code spice is left in, but muted. It's another decently-executed programmer.

The original film - 1932's "Guilty as Hell" is a great little movie, mainly because of the chemistry between the two leads, Victor McLaglen and Edmund Lowe. Here the leads have all been replaced by stars who were slipping in their box office demand by the mid 1930's or were B players to begin with, although I think the performances are good here by all save one - Lynne Overman, who plays the role of the reporter that was Edmund Lowe's part in the 1932 film. He's very annoying in the first half, but he improves to the point that he's endurable by the second half. Also, it's never really explained in this remake why reporter Kirk thinks he can waltz into police detective McKinley's office anytime he feels like it.

In case you've never seen the original, this film is about the resolution of a murder case in which the young wife of a doctor is found strangled in her home. At the beginning of the film you see that her husband, Dr. Tindal (John Barrymore) is actually the guilty party, and you get to see him set up the murder scene so that the murder is pinned on her boyfriend. Thus the murder is just Tindal's way of getting even with both his unfaithful wife and the man she really loves. Things seem to be going Dr. Tindal's way until reporter Russell Kirk falls for the accused man's sister and does some further digging.

This film is almost a frame by frame remake of the original, and I knew that before I watched it. The main reason to view it is to see John Barrymore doing a good job in a lead role after Hollywood had largely written him off when alcoholism began to interfere with his ability to remember lines and even project emotion on screen to some degree. The few places where there are differences between this film and "Guilty as Hell" has to do with the production code. In 1932, you actually see the doctor strangle his wife, here you do not. In 1932, reporter Russell Kirk is spouting off all kinds of suggestive remarks, here he's just annoying. Finally, the way the doctor fools people into believing that his wife is alive when he leaves the apartment the night he kills her, thus giving himself an alibi, has been changed due to the fact that technology has rendered the original method obsolete.

I'd recommend this film just to see John Barrymore, but if you want to see this same story done right in all of its precode glory, watch 1932's "Guilty as Hell".

NIGHT CLUB SCANDAL (Paramount, 1937), directed by Ralph Murphy, is not much of a story set mostly in a night club, but more of a murder mystery with a slight twist where the actual killer is known from its opening scene. Though this could have been a new idea for a murder mystery premise, actually NIGHT CLUB SCANDAL had originated as GUILTY AS HELL (Paramount, 1932) starring Edmund Lowe, Victor McLaglen, Richard Arlen and Henry Stephenson, with Elizabeth Patterson playing Mrs. Elvira Ward, the same role repeated here for NIGHT CLUB SCANDAL.

The story introduces Doctor Ernest A. Tindal (John Barrymore) about to leave for his medical society banquet. Having just murdered his wife, Ruth, leaving her body in the bedroom, Tindal sets up a perfect alibi with Mrs. Elvira Ward (Elizabeth Patterson) as a witness seeing him leaving with Doctor Goodman (Leonard Willey) while his wife, unable to attend due to a headache, being heard outside playing the Franz Liszt composition "Liebesmanne" on her piano. Later, at the Cumbuling Club, Frank Marlan (Harvey Stephens) leaves his sister, Vera (Louise Campbell) on a secret rendezvous with Ruth., only to come to her apartment the back way and find her dead. He leaves before being discovered by Mrs. Ward and the messenger boy (George Offerman Jr.) entering the apartment to bring her the prescribed medicine ordered by her husband. Captain McKinley (Charles Bickford) and his assistant, Duffy (John Sheehan) come into the case, along with McKinley's newspaper friend, Russell Kirk (Lynne Overman), of the Morning Star, already at the scene ahead of his arrival. With Mrs. Alvin (Cecil Cunningham), Tindal's cook, suspecting the wife's infidelity, and McKinley finding fingerprints on the doorknobs, a watch chain on the victim's hand and fingerprints on the doorknob links Frank to the murder. With Frank becoming the prime suspect finds Tindal's perfect alibi to let the law take its course. While night club owner, Jack Reed (J. Carrol Naish) and his wife, Julia (Evelyn Brent), might also be linked to the murder, the jury finds Frank guilty anyway, and sentenced for execution. Kirk, however, feels Frank is innocent, but is unable to prove his theory.

Other cast members include: Barlowe Borland (Doctor Sully); George Guhl (Brown); and John Hamilton (The Governor). Evelyn Brent briefly sings "There'll Be No More Tears," a song introduced earlier in Paramount's HER HUSBAND LIES starring Gail Patrick. Other songs as "Stop, You're Breaking My Heart," and "Double or Nothing," introduced in other Paramount 1937 musicals, are heard instrumentally in night club sequence.

Well scripted by Lillie Hayward from the play "Riddle Me This" by Daniel B. Rubin, NIGHT CLUB SCANDAL is a very entertaining 74 minutes. Although John Barrymore heads the cast, this product very much belongs to Lynne Overman (who always talks like he's drunk) and Charles Bickford as friendly rivals. Louise Campbell is charming as the female co-star, with Evelyn Brent, former leading lady of the silent screen, having some some fine moments with her tough babe stereotype performance.

Commonly presented on daytime or late show during the 1960s and early 1970s, NIGHT CLUB SCANDAL, which has never been distributed on video cassette, did have cable television broadcasts on American Movie Classics (1989-1990) before making its Turner Classic Movies premiere August 13, 2020, as part of its tribute to John Barrymore in one of his finer yet long forgotten programmers of the late 1930s worth viewing today. (***)

John Barrymore stars in Night Club Scandal which was a remake of an Edmund Lowe/Victor McLaglen film Guilty As Hell. In the previous film Lowe and McLaglen are first billed and play the reporter and the police captain who first solve a society murder and then have to solve it again when they suspect they've got the wrong man.

John Barrymore is the society doctor who kills his young cheating wife and frames her paramour Harvey Stephens. The reporter and police captain parts are done by Lynne Overman and Charles Bickford.

We know Barrymore did it, but the story is how first Overman then Bickford figure out it was a frame. Overman who was a Paramount regular plays his part like he was imitating Lee Tracy. Good, but a copy.

As for Barrymore he underplays effectively, no staged histrionics in what he does. The women's parts are Louise Campbell who fights for her brother Stephens and a nice performance from Evelyn Brent as Naish's wife and a nightclub singer.

Not a great Barrymore film, in fact a B picture from Paramount. Still those who like the Great Profile will like this.