Diamond Jim

In maybe his most famous role, Edward Arnold stars as Diamond Jim Brady, the outsized financier in the late 19th century who builds a fortune in the expanding American railroads. Brady was also a famous social figure along Broadway and was famous as Lillian Russell's friend and famous for his immense appetite for fine foods.

Lucky in business but not in love, Brady comes off as a shrewd but genial man, one who values his friendships even with the women he may have been in love with.

Arnold is just sensational as the blustery but jovial man who helps make Lillian Russell (Binnie Barnes) a star. He's perfectly believable as the ambitious baggage handler, the smooth-talking salesman, and the generous millionaire who likes to wear diamond jewelry Barnes is solid as Russell, the most famous singer of her day.

Jean Arthur plays the vapid Southern girl, Brady first proposes to and a lookalike girl from New York he later meets and tries to marry. Cesar Romero plays the guy she's in love with, but he's dating Russell.

Co-stars include George Sidney as the pawnbroker, Eric Blore as the inventor, Hugh O'Connell plays the businessman who gives Brady his big start, and William Demarest plays the waiter.

Edward Arnold was so famous for playing Diamond Jim that he repeated in the role in 1940 in LILLIAN RUSSELL, which starred Alice Faye, Henry Fonda, and Don Ameche.

This film is worth watching for Arnold's performance and for its look at America, when it was growing fast and prospering.

Actually, the broad strokes of this film are true. Brady did make his fortune as a salesman for railroad equipment, wore loud diamond jewelry, had an enormous appetite, and he did know Lillian Russell for years. It's the individual scenes that were created by Preston Sturges for dramatic license. If the Gilded Age had not produced such a character, Preston Sturges would have invented him.

Brady falls in love with a southern belle from Charleston who marries somebody else and then years later he meets another woman, Jane Matthews, who looks just like her, yet the two women are not related. He falls for her only because she looks like the first love, but again, her affection is returned but not her love. The theme of the film being that Brady was a man with tremendous financial success but who never found love that was reciprocated.

Edward Arnold didn't get that many leading roles, and this was one of them that he seemed born to play. His Diamond Jim is bigger than life and a generous soul who just happens to also be a great salesman. Also note William Demarest as a waiter. He ended up being a staple in Sturges' films.

Folks, this is the finest movie I've ever seen. It stars my all-time favorite actor, Edward Arnold. I'm 53. I saw it just once. I was 20. I cried at the end (and I'm a guy!) It's disappeared. If anyone can tell me how to get a copy of it, I'll send them a lollipop.

This flick shoes Edward Arnold at his height. He is extremely underrated these days because he is so little known. A onetime president of the Screen Actors Guild (so was Ronald Reagan)but old Eddie was a president first. Additionally, Arnold once had top billing over Cary Grant (The Toast of New York.)

Anyway, if anyone can help me find this flick, I would be most grateful. Then there are other flicks after this.

Thank you,

James Buchanan Brady made a fortune in the development of American Railroads - the cutting edge of 19th Century technology (as the internet is today). Brady, unlike Vanderbilt, Gould, Fisk, Drew, Harriman, and Hill, did not build up a vast system of railroad lines like the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Grand Central Railroad, or the Baltimore and Ohio System. Instead he sold the Railroads equiptment they needed, in particular the rolling stock (i.e. the railways car). But he was a man who enjoyed life. He weighed over three hundred pounds by his eating the largest meals imaginable (a typical meal for Brady would have five main courses, and end with a box of candy - oddly enough he never drank: his favorite drink was orange juice). He romanced the leading entertainer of the day, Ms Lillian Russell. An advanced psychological thinker, Brady wore different sets of expensive jewelry with his different suits - to advertise his success, and impress railway executives to use him to get the materials that they needed.

He never was married (Ms Russell loved him dearly, but did not want to marry him). He died in 1917 of urinary problems due to his diet. His fortune was used to fund an important foundation at Johns Hopkins for the study of urology.

The script for this 1935 film was by Preston Sturgis, and was one of his best films (sans his own directed ones). Arnold does very well in it, playing the good natured, clever Brady as a sharp but decent person (which he was), who despite his great financial and social success never achieved his happiness. He dies when he sees that there is no point in pursuing the stringent diet that would prolong his lonely life, so after burning I.O.U.s from his friend, he insists he have the "normal" meal he enjoys. Arnold is last seen heading for the meal that will help kill him. He will eat himself to death. A really bizaare film conclusion - but with Sturgis's script and Arnold's acting it is successfully pulled off.

I saw this movie a couple of days ago at Film Forum, one of a double feature with another Sturgis film, If I Were King. Almost missed Diamond Jim because had never heard about it before, and only wanted to see the other film. After coming in a few minutes late, I found it fascinating also because of actor Edward Arnold, who played Diamond Jim more as a sympathetic, rather than, e.g. a pathetic, man. Aghast at his eating habits, I thought it morbid and indicative of depression. When I later read his biography on the Internet, I immediately thought that his dining habits might be a substitution for not drinking alcohol. Certainly a Type-A personality, and an Alpha-male. Big in every way, his largeness of appetite(s) was endearing and sad, in equal measures. Likely he could not have become what he became without the morbid appetite! Or he would have become an alcoholic or a drug addict -- the latter maybe less likely in his time and place. Definitely glad to have seen it, I recommend the movie. The movie was perhaps a forerunner of Leonardo DeCaprio's Howard Hughes in The Aviator.