Anjos da Broadway

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

For the most part this unusual, thought-provoking and character-driven moral fable is a fascinating affair but, in spite of the compact running-time, it becomes tiresomely talkative (especially given Hecht's overwritten script). Co-directed by a writer (Hecht made seven films in this multiple capacity, but this is the first one I've watched!) and a cinematographer that were second to none in their respective professions, it's small wonder that the film is brimming with sparkling dialogue (particularly as delivered by Thomas Mitchell, here in his trademark role of philosophical drunk) and inventive shadowy lighting.

The main roles, however, are equally well-filled: Mitchell, as I said, wasn't really stretching himself here but his three co-stars - Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Rita Hayworth and John Qualen - had rarely been offered such an opportunity to shine up to this point. Fairbanks' best-known role had been his 'smiling villain' Rupert of Hentzau in THE PRISONER OF ZENDA (1937; where's that DVD, Warners?) but he had already made other impressive ensemble pieces, such as THE YOUNG IN HEART (1938; see my review elsewhere) and GUNGA DIN (1939); actually, his role here is sort of similar to that of the former - though he's a harder character, an utter heel, but whose scheme of 'taking' a man he believes to be a millionaire rebounds on himself and actually ends up involved in the 'taking' of his 'business partners' to the benefit of the latter (who's really an embezzler on the brink of suicide)! The unwilling crook is played by John Qualen, the great - if largely unsung - diminutive and mild-mannered character actor, whose other notable roles included the murderer in HIS GIRL Friday (1940), a victim of the Oklahoma Dustbowl in THE GRAPES OF WRATH (1940) and "Miser" Stevens in THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER (1941). The film's feminine interest, then, is provided by a young Rita Hayworth who, again, exceeds all expectations with her role of a star-struck girl who forsakes her dreams of glory in order to do a good deed (even if she's initially drawn into the 'plot' purely on a whim by Fairbanks); indeed, the characters' individual reformation - more so than in THE YOUNG IN HEART, and done in a much less sentimental manner - adds an undercurrent of spirituality to the film's prominent sophistication and hard-boiled veneer, which is not so surprising coming from Hecht!

For its time, ANGELS OVER Broadway must have seemed like a B-movie with pretensions; while it falters here and there under the strain of its own self-indulgence, because it is unique, the film doesn't feel all that dated today and is bound to give detailed pleasure on every viewing.

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?

It is so easy to write off beauty as the reason an actress achieves great rank in Hollywood, and it is what also plagued Marilyn Monroe - the desperate need to be taken seriously for your talent rather than your looks once you have become famous for beauty alone.

I myself had never given Rita Hayworth props for anything other than her luminous visual persona. So it was with great delight that I came across this exceptional film, with its screwball comedy timing and humor, and its amazing ensemble casting - from a sleazy but compelling performance by Douglas Fairbanks Jr. To the ironic portrayal of the has-been drunk played to iconic perfection by Thomas Mitchell.

But the two real gems are John Qualen as a suicidal bookkeeper who is the target of a 2 bit mob scam, and Rita Hayworth - in a portrayal as exceptional to me as Rosalind Russell in The Front Page, or Marilyn Monroe in 7 Year Itch - plays a star-struck wanna-be who is barely making it in shady circumstances, yet manages to convey tremendous innocence and idealism in spite of her deeply compromised situation.

The most striking thing to me of all is how uncanny it is to watch what one would consider to be a classic Monroe performance coming from an actress seven years prior to Marilyn having been given her first on screen part. Suddenly I felt like I understood how Marilyn had crafted her persona - hours of sitting in darkened theaters watching Rita Hayworth concoct her brilliant magic of innocence and seduction like it was real and not a carefully crafted act.

In my humble opinion, I don't believe Marilyn would have been nearly as iconic had she not had Rita Hayworth's example to follow, and this portrayal in Angels Over Broadway is the link that, to me, irrefutably proves my point! What an amazing, under-appreciated work of group talent and screen writing art! Rita is poignantly brilliant and her performance ranks for me with Robert Williams in Platinum Blonde for great, naturalistic acting that lasts through time.

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.