The Mind Reader

A trio of con artists (Warren William, Allen Jenkins and Clarence Muse) travels from city to city in middle America swindling suckers with a bogus mind reading act featuring William as "Chandra the Great," complete with turban and crystal ball. We the screen audience get to see the trickery behind his apparent clairvoyance, but a pretty, unemployed stenographer (Constance Cummings) is not so fortunate, and besotted with William's talents, joins his itinerant enterprise. Eventually she finds out what is really going on, but by then it's too late because she has fallen in love with her employer, and he with her.

To elaborate further would spoil the impact of this unusual pre-Code film, but I will say that its chief problem is that Cummings is just too smart to be as innocently unaware of certain things as the screenplay tries to make her, so we stop taking the story seriously. However, there remains much witty and mature dialogue, striking cinematography, and this interesting group of performers.

William gets the opportunity to play the on- and offstage modes of his character and also makes the most of an extended drunk scene. Cummings, largely wasted here, projects a tart intelligence that is probably more than the role deserves. Jenkins, the eternal sidekick, gets a generous share of the verbal zingers and Muse's role goes beyond the subservient nonsense usually assigned to black supporting players at that time. Mayo Methot, the future Mrs. Humphrey Bogart, appears briefly as a grief-deranged victim of Chandra's charlatanry.

Like so many feature films of the early 30's, this one moves along briskly so that none of its improbabilities have time to sink in and ruin the fun.

What makes this especially entertaining is how it pretends to take itself ever so seriously, but subtly and deliberately, not quite convincingly enough. Humour is often funnier when it's not that obvious and you have to discover it hidden in a serious drama like this.

In this fairly short picture, Warren William has tremendous fun hamming up his moustache twiddling loveable rogue character to a hundred and ten percent. You can't be certain whether it's because you can really sense his own personal enjoyment at playing this role or whether you're being fooled by some good acting but whatever it is, that ninety year old enjoyment is infectious. Although you'll probably forget you've seen this in a few weeks (to be honest, it's not that memorable), you can't help but enjoy watching it.

Since this is a First National B-feature, without the constraints of conforming to the Warner's 'A-picture' conventions, Roy Del Ruth, possibly WB's top director at the time also enjoys this lack of restriction by experimenting with clever shots, wacky camera angles and atmospheric lighting. This makes the result both fun and interesting to watch but it's not just the direction and Warren William which make this picture worth seeing ninety years after it was made. It's actually a good little story with a great snappy script so and if you like 1930s, blue-collar, American speak, you'll find this just swell! Its script benefits from one of the writers being Wilson Mizner. Who? - he was one of America's most celebrated writers having had what might be described as a very eventful life (and yes, movies have been made about him) or as one of his contemporaries said: America's most fascinating outlaw. His street-level wit, nurtured by his own plentiful life experiences add a certain spice to this story which although fairly engaging anyway is made much tastier by the magic of his wordweaving.

Overall, although this is nothing that special with no deep message or even very shallow message, it is reasonably entertaining .

Warren William's character is traveling around the country doing various cons - painless dentistry, miracle hair tonic, the world's longest flagpole sitter (don't ask). Then he notices that a self described mentalist is cleaning up. He researches the trade some and comes up with an act as a mind reader and christens himself Chandra the Great. He asks the audience to write down their questions about the future or just the unknown parts of the present such as where did they misplace their keys and to sign their names to the paper. He then seems to burn the pieces of paper. In fact he sends them down a chute to his assistant Frank (Allen Jenkins) below, who then tells Chandra through a microphone what questions are asked and who wrote it. Chandra repeats what Frank says and then comes up with a bogus answer. The key to his success is dramatic and believable delivery, and with years of experience as a conman, he has delivery down pat. But then one day he meets a beautiful woman, Sylvia (Constance Cumming) who lost this month's rent money - his partner Frank stole it - and he falls in love. Complications ensue as Chandra must appear legitimate to Sylvia if he is going to win her love.

This is another great Warren William performance where, yes, he is doing hideous callous things trading on Depression era audiences who want to believe that somebody has answers to their problems, but you also empathize with him as a man who really has no skills other than being a conman whose motivation changes from merely wanting the easy life for himself to wanting nice things for his wife in an economic time that is extremely unforgiving. Of course if you tell enough lies to enough people who act on what you told them as though it was gospel, there are going to be some victims and they are not going to be happy about it and may hunt you down.

There is some wry social commentary going on here such as rich people having hundreds of dollars to blow on mind readers during the Depression, where average people had to scrape to come up with a dollar for the same thing. Also note that there is a smidgeon of racial equality here as Chandra has an African American partner (Clarence Muse) as well as Frank, and shakes hands with him when he says goodbye. That doesn't seem like much, but it was a lot even for the precode years.

With Allen Jenkins as Chandra's larcenous friend and assistant, Natalie Moorhead as one of Chandra's rich clients, and Constance Cumming in a rare Warner Brothers appearance.

A con-man works his way up the fortune-telling ladder only to find his life is not made better.

The con-man role is tailor made for the commanding Warren William. His Chandra The Fortune Teller is such a masterful stage presence who in the audience would dare challenge his psychic gift. Never mind that his shifty confederate Frank (Jenkins) is feeding him answers telephonically. It makes for a heckuva show, and the rubes keep coming, sometimes ruefully so. Oddly, I found myself being anxious when there's problems with the messaging relay from Frank. That is, do I really want Chandra to succeed in his criminal con job. Yet I couldn't help being torn. Anyway, notice in passing, how the map shows Chandra first touring smaller border state towns, nothing big yet. That will come later, once he hones his act. Cummings (Sylvia) makes an attractive love interest, even if the script presents her flip-flops in a pretty implausible light. Also, the familiar Allen Jenkins plays his part pretty straight, unlike many of his comedic side-kick parts.

Now, you might think, courtesy the screenplay, that every upper-class husband in New York has a silken mistress, leaving a broken-hearted wife behind. Then too, I suspect that dark suspicion played well with Depression era audiences. But once Chandra goes big-time, there are no more rubes, only the sleek and well upholstered. Frankly, I didn't like the big turnaround that comes last. After all, this is pre-Code, so abject mea-culpa endings aren't required as they soon would be. Up to that point, the story really deserves a climax more ironic than the implausibly conventional. (Check out the similar Nightmare Alley {1947} for a more apt ending.)

Anyway, William has to be one of the neglected delights of that long ago period. Passing away in 1948 means he had no post-war credits to speak of. Thus he's largely unknown even to many old movie fans. It's that pre-Code period, before his serial programmers (Perry Mason, the Lone Wolf), where he really shines, usually as an ethically challenged big-wig (Employee's Entrance {1933}; Skyscraper Souls {1932}). And there's no one better. Plus, he's good enough here to make even the flawed, albeit interesting, script well worth watching.

Mind Reader, The (1933)

*** (out of 4)

Excellent performances highlight this Warner drama about a con man (Warren William) and his assistant (Allen Jenkins) who travel town to town with a circus doing various acts to bring in money. They then notice that the mind reader gag will bring in the most and soon the alias "Chandra" starts pulling people in but there's going to be a price to pay. I had heard so many positive things about this movie that it quickly became one that I searched out and thankfully got to see due to a recent TCM showing. Fans of classic cinema should certainly keep their eyes open for this one as it lives up to its reputation and also delivers some incredible performances. The film is pretty much divided into two halves with the first one dealing with various cons being performed by William. I found all of these games to be incredibly entertaining due in large part to William being able to push them over. It's very important that we believe these cons could actually be pushed over on people and William is so good here that it's never a problem. He slides into this role and never looks back and there's no a single frame in the film where we don't believe what he's doing and saying. Constance Cummings plays the woman he eventually falls in love with and the two share some great moments together and really make their love story believable. The underrated Jenkins does a very good job as well as he has several nice comic moments. The biggest surprise comes from future Bogart wife Mayo Methot who nearly steals the film as a young woman who is given bad advice and comes to let William know about it. I won't spoil what happens but it's pretty unforgettable and she really nails the part. I think the film begins to lose some of its power during the final twenty-five minutes with the last scam starts to be too big and of course there's going to be a moral lesson to pay. Up until then the film is extremely fast, fun and most important features some terrific acting. This film certainly deserves to be better known and hopefully TCM will start to show it more often.