Here's another film that I saw as a Pathescope cutdown: 58 minutes compared to the 79 on its initial release. Given that this is all that's know to survive, I'm grateful.
Ralph Forbes is a lawyer in the District Attorney's office, trying to put a criminal gang led by Arthur Vinton behind bars. Instead, they frame him. They also get Paul Fix, a member of their group to shoulder all the blame. While the two men meet in jail, Vinton marries Adrienne Ames, who had been Forbes' girl. When Fix is mortally wounded in an escape attempt, he signs a confession that Forbes was framed, freeing him. He also tells Forbes who else was in on the deed.
It's derived from a novel by John Goodwin -- of whom I had never heard -- but it's clearly modeled on Dumas' THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO. The movie moves at a good clip, and Forbes is surprisingly good under the direction of Edward L. Marin.
Marin was one of several directors who came out of Gower Gulch and made the trek to the majors, directing for MGM. Like fellow Gower Gulch graduate Richard Thorpe, he could get good performances out of unprepossessing actors, and produce films that the editors could cut into well-paced shows. Unlike Thorpe, he failed to parlay this into a career directing A movies. He directed at Paramount, United Artists and was working on Randolph Scott westerns at Warner Brothers when he died in 1951, only 52.
