Angels Over Broadway

Popular writer Ben Hecht certainly was no stranger to the Broadway cornucopia of gangsters, molls, hoofers, & sharpies and mixes them all in a non-glamorous look at the Great White Way.

Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. in a bit of offbeat casting plays Bill O'Brien, Broadway sharpie who thinks he's latched on to a sure thing in steering rube John Qualen into a fixed poker game. Qualen however is not a millionaire. Fairbanks has it all wrong, Qualen doesn't have money, he's embezzled $3000.00 from his employer and is thinking of suicide. Fairbanks ain't as sharp as he thinks, but with the help of inebriated playwright Thomas Mitchell he tries to bluff his way through the gangsters and turn a profit.

Always appealing to Fairbanks's better nature is Rita Hayworth who does a good job of arousing the noble and the carnal at the same time. She's not Queen of Columbia pictures yet, just a crown princess. But Hayworth is just magnificent in this part.

Thomas Mitchell is always given kudos for his part and they are deserved, but one who's not talked about is John Qualen. Qualen had a fine run of character parts in his long career of little men constantly being victimized. He started that cycle with The Front Page and continues it on with Muley in The Grapes of Wrath and now this part in Angels Over Broadway. He was a fine, but underrated actor and another favorite of John Ford.

It's worth it just to see Rita Hayworth as always and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. with that New York City accent.

Produced, directed and written by Ben Hecht, Angels Over Broadway is a film that I personally hadn't heard of until it showed up on one of the British Freeview stations this last week. The first thing what surprised was the bona fide classy cast list, Mr Charm himself, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Miss Beautiful 1940, Rita Hayworth, Mr Ever Watchable, Thomas Mitchell & Mr Undermentioned, John Qualen. The next thing that surprised me was during a bit of research I learned that critics of the day gave the picture a hard time for not soft soaping the audience, madness really, because this is a razor sharp and highly efficient picture.

Set around one night on Broadway, our four main characters come together courtesy of Charles Engle's {Qualen} intention to kill himself over a huge debt. Mistakenly thinking that Engle has loads of cash to burn, Bill O'Brien {Fairbanks} enlists Nina Barona {Hayworth} in the hope of luring Engle to a poker game run by seedy gangster types, and thus fleecing him of his cash, where of course the pair of them will get a cut. Yet boozy playwright Gene Gibbons {Mitchell}, upon learning of Engle's suicidal leanings, hatches a plan to turn the tables on the poker fiddlers and turn Engle's life around. Naturally tho, not everything is going to go to plan!

A smashing film that shines brightly with quality acting and comically astute writing, so if you get the chance then give it a go and you might be as surprised as I was. 8/10

I first became friends with Rita when I was 22 and the same age as she is in this only film of hers I had never seen till last night. On that night she and Hermes Pan (master choreographer)were slumming to show her what a coffee house was like, and my roommate who knew Hermes invited them to the hippie like house in an alley way in West Hollywood we shared.We both were in love with the Goddess and did black magic (amateur)to see that Hermes would bring her and it worked.Rita was 38 an still beautiful,a gypsy who drank our cheap wine,and we talked and laughed till dawn. From that day forward,we spent three or four nights a week at her home on Hartford and she often burnt dinner for us and we drank Dom Perignon and we danced and laughed and she told stories and her Brooklyn accent would come out (I hear it a lot in ANGELS) Rita always insisted she could act and this film showed her talent and some of her incredible allure which was emerging.I think she did BLOOD AND SAND the next year where she was outrageously sensual and cruel.She was great in that.Paulene Kael disliked her because she was dubbed by Anita Ellis in most films even though Rita had a decent voice. I found this Hecht film to be far ahead of its time with terrific casting and dialogue which sounded like Mankiewicz in a way,and a touch of Damon Runyon with sophistication.It is an odd, and terrific film and my Rita was really good and I watched her and she "listened" to other actors like a seasoned performer.She still is magical and her presence on film still excites.

This early Rita Hayworth movie shows off her more youthful charms of innocence and good will. She was not yet a femme fatale or a glamour queen, although she does get an opportunity for a brief dance. She was born Margarita ('Rita') Cansino in a family of dancers, so she could dance before she could act, and made numerous film appearances as Rita Cansino before she was reinvented by Columbia Studios. This film has never been released on DVD so I had to buy an old video to see it. It is written, produced, and directed by Ben Hecht, and describes Hecht's Broadway of that era. The unlikely casting of glamour boy Douglas Fairbanks Junior as a small-time chiseller is a surprise. He does tolerably well but is no genius at it. Thomas Mitchell plays an inebriated playwright who five years ago won the Pulitzer Prize but is now a flop. Well, that's Broadway! Or was! I am referring to a time, of course, when they still had plays on Broadway, and not just musicals. Yes, believe it or not, way back in the Stone Age there was something called drama on the Great White Way, but only mastodons and plesiosaurs (got my geological eras mixed up, but who cares) remember it. The film features a fine performance from sad-sack character actor John Qualen as 'Charles Engle', a rather obvious pun on the title of the film, 'Engel' being German for angel. The film is very heavy on dialogue and somewhat preachy, but Hecht's dialogue is interesting and often extremely witty, so even though it is longer than a modern 'text message', it is worth listening to. The film was made, after all, before attention spans shrank to five seconds. The story is rather contrived and corny, and lurches rather heavily in the direction of Moral Messages. Well, good for Hecht, he was trying to get some messages across, rather than just titillate. So he was a bit clumsy at it. The film is still very good and well worth watching. And there is the irresistible Rita to gaze at, in wonder and awe. Sometimes you just want to give her a hug, don'tcha?

This had a very interesting beginning, really getting my attention, but then bogged down way too much, mainly with Thomas Mitchell's inebriated rantings. (Anyone ever notice how many drunks and loud-and-obnoxious characters Mitchell played?)

The writers also gave Rita Hayworth some sappy dialog as she tried to be Douglas Fairbanks' girl. But, I wasn't complaining looking at the young, innocent-and-gorgeous looking Hayworth. Wow - hubba, hubba!

The story, however, does pick up with the card game and then finishes strong. John Qualen is good as the mousy man who really is at the center of this story. He may not be the 'name' actor the others are here, but he is the real star of this movie.