Ben Hecht, reputedly the highest paid screenwriter in Hollywood, sometimes directed. Those efforts, among them ANGELS AND SIN, SPECTRE OF THE ROSE and CRIME WITHOUT PASSION all reek of arty pretension, low-key lighting (often as here by Lee Garmes) and pages of purple-prose dialogue. It's as if occasionally Hecht said the hell with all this hack crap I do for money, now for once I'm going to create some real Art. Capitol A. One can't help but admire him for trying, for selling scripts and subjects no one else in town would have even dared peddle. Here in 1940, he even managed to convince crusty Harry Cohn at Columbia to star Rita Hayworth in what was to be her first A role. She is as ever beyond gorgeous and does her best, acting with the sort of voice Marilyn Monroe must have copied. Mitchell, as to be expected, is his usual excellent self doing a Mitchell, and the underrated John Qualen is as always superb. Unfortunately, suave leading man, the debonair Douglas Fairbanks Jr., works hard (too hard?) at doing a tough guy Jimmy Cagney/Bogie character and almost succeeds. Almost. The trouble, alas, is not in the limitations or talents of a first-rate cast, but in Hecht's writing. He attempts unconvincingly to coat his usual hard-boiled style with sudden shifts to standard Hollywood corn off the cob. Hecht, as he displayed in FRONT PAGE and many of his best plays and screenplays, was always at his best when he was a 100% cynic. Here, sadly, it is Hecht and not Fairbanks who seems out of character.
Review of Angels Over Broadway
