Lawyer Man
Directed by William Dieterle
Written by Rian James and James Seymour from a novel by Max Tell
1932/US
Warner Bros.
IMDb page
First viewing/Forbidden Hollywood Vol. 4
Olga Michaels: Remember, I told you it doesn’t pay to take cases against these big uptown lawyers. They got too much pull!
Anton (Tony) Adam: Yeah, well, I got a lotta push.
Joan Blondell and William Powell make a winning pair in their only film together.
The setting is early 20th Century in New York. Crack defense attorney Tony Adam works the Lower East Side. He relies on faithful secretary Olga Michaels (Blondell). Her unrequited love for her boss is evident to everybody except him. He’s quite a ladies man.
Tony wins a murder case against a high-class lawyer. It is unexplained why this kind of a lawyer would be on the other side of a murder trial. Any way, the attorney thinks Tony’s flair for jury trials would be a perfect match for his firm and Tony agrees to become his partner. Olga moves with him but is forced to witness him take up with the boss’s sister Barbara (Helen Vinson).
Tony is soon courted by gang boss John Gilmurry but refuses to join his organization. Gilmurry tries to destroy him by introducting him to beautiful Virginia St. Johns (Claire Dodd). Virginia has Tony eating out of her hand in short order and gets him to pursue a phony breach of promise case against an associate of Gilmurry. This doesn’t go so well for him. Later Gilmurry offers Tony a job as Assistant DA to get him on his side and the tables turn. With Roscoe Karns as a reporter and Sterling Holloway as Olga’s chum.
This movie’s plot is far too convoluted for the 68 minutes devoted to it. But Powell and Blondell are in top form and their scenes together are all excellent.
