The Mind Reader

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.