Stubs - The Man with Two Faces

The Man with Two Faces (1934) Starring: Edward G. Robinson, Mary Astor, Ricardo Cortez, Mae Clarke, Louis Calhern. Directed by Archie Mayo. Screenplay by Tom Reed and Niven Busch. Based on the play The Dark Tower by George S. Kaufman and Alexander Woollcott, produced by Sam H. Harris Theatrical Enterprises, Inc. (New York, 25 Nov 1933). USA Black and White. Run time: 72 minutes. Drama.

Films based on plays are nothing new. The Dark Tower is a mystery drama by George S. Kaufman and Alexander Woollcott, first produced in 1933. The play ran at the Morosco Theatre in New York from November 25, 1933 until January 1934.

The film version, entitled at various times: The Strange Case of Mr. Chautard, Dark Victory and The Dark Tower, was in production from March 5 until April 4, 1934.

Ben Weston (Ricardo Cortez) is the producer of the play Jessica Wells (Mary Astor) stars in and her lover.

The film opens with the production of the play The Dark Tower, which is coincidentally the return of Jessica Wells (Mary Astor) after three years away. With the help of her physician, Dr. Kendall (Arthur Byron), Jessica is strong enough for her return. The play is going through its out-of-town run with the hope to open on Broadway. Her lover, Ben Weston (Ricardo Cortez), is the producer. Jessica, as we learn, also owns 50% of the play, which was written by Horace Barry Jones (John Eldredge). Jessica’s brother Damon Wells (Edward G. Robinson) is her co-star.

Daphne (Mae Clark), Damon Wells (Edward G. Robinson), and Ben are celebrating until Sidney returns.

Things are going well and everyone regroups after the show at the Wells’ Aunt Martha Temple (Margaret Dale­) celebrating when in through the door walks Sidney Vance (Louis Calhern), Jessica’s husband presumed dead for three years following a misadventure in San Francisco. No one is happy to see him, least of which Martha's Housekeeper Hattie (Emily Fitsroy), whom Sidney starts to boss around.

Jessica almost immediately falls under Sidney Vance's (Louis Calhern) influence.

But it is Jessica who has the oddest reaction. She goes from a vivacious actress to someone who seems to be under a spell. Her actions become robotic and she acquiesces to any of Sidney’s demands. At first, Aunt Martha wants him out of her house, but seeing what it would do to Jessica, Damon overrules her and allows him to stay.

Eventually, everyone leaves. In the morning, Dr. Kendall is back trying to help her. But Sidney is there and chases everyone from the room. Vance is eager for the play to open, and when Damon points out that Jessica is too much of a zombie to act when she is around him, Vance makes it quite clear that he can be bought off to leave.

Damon disappears, but a man calling himself Jules Chautard keeps calling Aunt Martha’s looking for him. On a return to the house, Sidney, who is aware of the calls, asks Damon about them. He mentions that Chautard has asked after investing in the play.

Meanwhile, anxious for the play to open, Sidney has forced Jessica to confront Ben about getting the play to open on Broadway. At first, Ben is happy to see her and talks about them running away together. But Jessica has been “programmed” to only talk about the play and her desire to get back to work.

In his office, Ben confronts Sidney. The two of them get into a fistfight with Ben getting the better of Sidney. He has him pinned and is choking him when Jessica calls out and the room fills with others in the office who break it up.

Sidney brings Jessica with him to his meeting with Jules Chautard (Edward G. Robinson).

Later, back at Aunt Martha’s, Chautard comes looking for Damon, but Sidney is all too anxious to talk to him. They arrange to meet later that afternoon at Chautard’s hotel room. Sidney arrives, but has Jessica with him. Chautard doesn’t like doing business with women around, so she is sent home.

When they're along, Jules poisons Sidney.

Alone, Vince pours himself a drink, which turns out to be poison. Drugged and passed out, Chautard drags him into a closet where he stabs him to death. Then, making sure there are no fingerprints around, Chautard checks out of the room.

Everyone is very happy to hear about Sidney’s death.

David Landau plays lead detective Curtis.

When the police search the scene of the crime, they don’t find any clues, but the lead detective, Curtis (David Landau), notices something between the pages of a Gideon bible that leads him to believe that an actor had once occupied the room.

Ben is anxious to get the play opened as soon as possible and is making arrangements when Chautard shows up at his office. He reveals that he is in fact Damon, something that was already obvious to the audience. Damon mentions to Ben that Chautard was easy to do since he had previously played a similar role years earlier, the Duc de Rastignac.

Jessica speaks with the police and she is cleared of any wrongdoing. The police believe that Chautard has disappeared and they try to retrace his steps and Sidney’s expecting to find a connection. Damon is asked to stay behind after Jessica’s interview. He is worried at first, thinking that they might have figured it out, but instead, they want him to identify Sidney’s body in the morgue.

Weeks go by and the police don’t seem to have a clue as to Chautard’s whereabouts.

The play finally opens on Broadway. Ben and Jessica are back together and looking forward to their future.

Damon is rehearsing with Daphne when Detective Curtis arrives.

Damon is rehearsing with his long-suffering girlfriend and co-star Daphne Flowers (Mae Clark) when Curtis comes to visit him. He tells Damon that they learned that Vance murdered his first wife and also stole money from another woman.

Curtis then adds that he once saw Damon in a play, fifteen years ago, playing the Duc de Rastignac, the model for Chautard, and shows him the mustache they found in the hotel. After Damon admits he killed Vance, Curtis suggests that because Vance was a murderer and thief, Damon might get a light sentence depending on how he presents on the witness stand. Damon is sure he’ll kill it. Even so, as he is about to make his entrance into the play, Damon is still planning to go to Aunt Martha’s afterward.

The ending is a little ambiguous. The play's ending, in which Vance's murderer is allowed to escape scot-free by a sympathetic detective was obviously altered at the very last minute to appease the new Production Code.

The film received pretty good reviews when it was released on August 4, 1934. The New York Times reviewer, only identified by the initials A.D.S., referred to the adaptation as “excellent”.

While the play adroitly concealed the identity of the killer, it is very obvious on screen due to the recognizable actor involved. Edward G. Robinson is too well-known to disappear totally into Chautard. Still, he gives a very strong performance, adding some humor along the way, which helps the production.

Mary Astor plays a good part of the film as a woman in a trance to her Svengali-like husband. We never see how she gets into the trance only that she is in one whenever Sidney is around. There is obviously some sort of hypnosis going on with Jessica squarely under Sidney’s spell. The role does offer Astor some interesting character juxtapositions.

Louis Calhern is a bit of a surprise, but only because I had never seen him in such a role like this before. Calhern had a broad range of roles in his long career, playing everything from the Marx Brothers’ foil in Duck Soup (1933) to the ineffective fence in The Asphalt Jungle (1950) to a hapless teacher in Blackboard Jungle (1955). Here, he is downright evil and this role is well within his wheelhouse.

Mae Clark plays Daphne Flowers, an almost superfluous character in the film.

Mae Clark has a rather small role as Daphne Flowers, Damon’s love interest though he treats her like she’s unwanted most of the time. The part doesn’t really add much to the story, though the film is better with her in it.

The production comes off as stagey at times. It is easy to see most of this appearing as-is on stage.  Archie Mayo might not be a household name but he does a good job with the material. As a director, Mayo worked in a variety of genres. His films include The Doorway to Hell (1930) with James Cagney and Lew Ayres, Convention City (1933) with Joan Blondell, The Mayor of Hell (1933) with James Cagney, The Petrified Forest (1936) with Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart, and The Adventures of Marco Polo (1938) with Gary Cooper.

The story has some issues, but I have to imagine they are in the source material as well. We never know why or how Sidney has such control over Jessica. There is clearly some connection between the two, one might even say telepathic, but it comes off as much as a contrivance as anything else.

The only clue left behind that points to Damon as the perp is the fact that there was a fake mustache left in a Gideon Bible. We never see the circumstance that led to this evidence being left behind and it seems rather odd that Damon wouldn’t have noticed it when he was going through the room cleaning up. We do see him close the Bible as part of the wiping away of fingerprints, which makes the fact that he wouldn’t have seen it even harder to believe.

The biggest issue is that the plot turns on the fact that the police detective investigating the murder would have seen Damon’s performance in a summer stock play fifteen years earlier and remember in detail that the character Damon played then resembles Chautard. Not that police detectives can’t see and enjoy plays, but that seems very coincidental. If it had been on Broadway, I might have accepted it more.

But this film doesn’t have the market cornered on plot holes. They’re there in a lot of films if you look close enough. Nor do the holes distract from the enjoyment of the film. The Man with Two Faces is not a great film, but it is fun. The acting is really pretty good and despite the occasional problems with the script, there is still a good balance of drama and humor. I would recommend the film to anyone who is a fan of Edward G. Robinson; he makes the film worth watching.