The stage play opened at the Booth on 23 April 1935 and ran a successful 99 performances. Grace George played the spinster and Henry Daniell the sinister fortune-hunter. H.C. Potter directed. M-G-M acquired the rights and made the first film version in 1935 with Aline MacMahon and Basil Rathbone. This second version was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Costume Design in black-and-white, losing to Edith Head's "A Place in the Sun".
Although produced on a "B" budget, this is a solidly engrossing movie thanks to a charismatically sympathetic performance by Ethel Barrymore and solid support from the likes of Betsy Blair, Angela Lansbury and Keenan Wynn. As the instigator of the sting, Maurice Evans has been taken to task for being a little too gentlemanly in his approach, but that that surely is a virtue rather than a fault. We, the audience, join Ethel Barrymore's ultra-sympathetic Mary Herries as innocent victims of his surprising duplicity. Assisted by Joseph Ruttenberg's superlatively moody photography, director John Sturges conjures up a tingling atmosphere throughout with a sure hand, extracting every bit of tension from a script that gradually turns the screws and adroitly piles suspense on suspense right up to the unnerving fade-out.
Although produced on a "B" budget, this is a solidly engrossing movie thanks to a charismatically sympathetic performance by Ethel Barrymore and solid support from the likes of Betsy Blair, Angela Lansbury and Keenan Wynn. As the instigator of the sting, Maurice Evans has been taken to task for being a little too gentlemanly in his approach, but that that surely is a virtue rather than a fault. We, the audience, join Ethel Barrymore's ultra-sympathetic Mary Herries as innocent victims of his surprising duplicity. Assisted by Joseph Ruttenberg's superlatively moody photography, director John Sturges conjures up a tingling atmosphere throughout with a sure hand, extracting every bit of tension from a script that gradually turns the screws and adroitly piles suspense on suspense right up to the unnerving fade-out.