Shadow of Doubt (MGM, 1935)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2022 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Last night my husband Charles got home from work in time for us to watch a surprisingly interesting movie on YouTube: Shadow of Doubt, a 1935 “B” in all but name from MGM (MGM head Louis B. Mayer threatened to fire anybody who referred to an MGM production as a “B” picture) not to be confused with Shadow of a Doubt, Alfred Hitchcock’s dark-toned masterpiece from 1943 (eight years later) – which didn’t stop Randall Schaefer, host of the “Hastings Mystery Theatre” that presented this film and others on YouTube, from referring to this film as Shadow of a Doubt. The 1935 Shadow of Doubt was directed by silent-era veteran George B. Seitz from a script by Wells Root based on a story by Arthur Somers Roche, who’s best known for the 1933 MGM film Penthouse and its 1939 remake, Society Lawyer. It starred Ricardo Cortez and Virginia Bruce in roles which in a bigger-budgeted MGM production would have gone to William Powell and Myrna Loy: Simeon “Sim” Sturdevant (Cortez) is an advertising executive from a well-to-do family and Trenna Plaice (Bruce) is a fading movie star coming off a huge flop called Lost Paradise.

Sim wants to marry her and also revitalize her career by getting her a contract for a radio show, which will enable them to live together in New York rather than having to have a long-distance relationship with him in New York and her in Hollywood. She protests that she already has a movie contract, and he tells her that after the failure of Lost Paradise her studio will likely drop her option and therefore she’ll be free to accept the radio gig. She tells him that independent producer Len Haworth (Bradley Page) has just offered her a three-picture deal for a million dollars, and though the deal is contingent on her accepting his marriage proposal, she’s going to go through with both contract offers. Sim warns her that Haworth has at least two other girlfriends – heiress Lisa Bellwood (Betty Furness) and cabaret singer Inez Johnson (Isabel Jewell) – and also that he has a history of beating up his women. It doesn’t matter, though, because within a reel after all that is established Len Haworth is found dead in his own apartment and both Sim, who had previously had an argument in public with Haworth at a nightclub where Inez performed, and Trenna are suspected.

The lead police officer on the case is Lt. Fred Wilcox (Ed Brophy), who’s hoping that solving the murder will mean his promotion to captain. But the film’s most interesting character by far is Sim’s aunt, Melissa Pilson (Constance Collier), who when she isn’t upbraiding Sim about his allegedly horrible taste in women is playing a big pipe organ. At first she’s ready to detest Trenna because she assumes she’s a gold-digger only after the family fortune, but when she actually crashes Trenna’s apartment she decides she likes her after all and wants her nephew Simi to marry her, which she had already decided to do even before Len got killed. She also hides Trenna’s gun, a 9 mm Luger which Trenna won in a shooting contest on the location of a desert picture she made back in 1926, which was stolen from her by a former butler and used to kill Len Haworth. Len’s butler Ehrhardt (Bernard Siegel) calls Trenna and tells her he knows who killed Len, but he will only tell her if she comes to meet him in person at a restaurant downtown – and of course he’s murdered himself before she can rendezvous with him and get the name. Later the killer shoots a third person as well, and is revealed to be [spoiler alert!] Ryan Ross (Regis Toomey), a Broadway tipster and wanna-be reporter who makes his living supplying columnists with leads on personal scandals involving celebrities and society people.

Though Shadow of Doubt is hardly in the same league as Hitchcock’s masterpiece with almost the same title, it’s a quite competent little film and one of the best movies Ricardo Cortez ever made, though if pressed I’d say his very best films were Frank Capra’s The Younger Generation (1928) – in which Cortez, né Jacob Krantz, plays what he was for real, a Jew who changes his name to succeed in business; and as Sam Spade in the original version of The Maltese Falcon in 1931, a quite good movie regrettably overshadowed by the masterpiece John Huston and Humphrey Bogart made of the same story a decade later.