The Spellbinder

"The Spellbinder" is a short film starring Lee Tracy and Patric Knowles. Tracy plays Jed Marlowe, a clever attorney who is expert at getting guilty people found not guilty. One of his clients, Dixon (Patric Knowles), comes to him and says that he has to kill his accountant, who knows too much about his shady bookkeeping.

Tracy wants no part of it. When the accountant dies, it appears to be an accident, but the man was tripped by Knowles and fell.

When Tracy's daughter (Barbara Read) comes home for a visit from school, she starts to date Dixon without her father's knowledge. When he finds out, it's too late. They're getting married.

It's always bad when a short film seems like Lawrence of Arabia, and this is one. It's not very exciting. The acting, though, is okay.

Watching this film, you can't help but wonder where Raymond Burr was hiding.

This somewhat dull courtroom drama feels like an hour-long Perry Mason episode, with Linda Hayes in the inevitable "Della Street" role to provide a modicum of romantic interest for the aging leading man, Lee Tracy. The plot is not worth describing; what I did find interesting that immediately after a series of amusing second features in which Tracy played youthful wise-acre roles similar to those in his Pre-Code heyday (such as "Crashing Hollywood" and "Wanted: Jane Turner"), Tracy has abruptly aged into a staid middle-aged character actor. (Interestingly he made this movie right after his return to Hollywood and his honeymoon in pre-war Europe with his bride, Helen Thomas, a former insurance agent.) In any case, he turns in a great performance- suiting the role, it's more mature and nuanced than usual, and it transcends the mediocre script. It's also intriguing to see Mr. Tracy playing a father, which was not something he did that often.