THE EARL OF CHICAGO

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 51, 14 June 1940, Page 30

THE EARL OF CHICAGO

(M-G-M) Ever since he raised the critics’ eyebrows and won their applause by portraying Danny the murderous bell-boy in "Night Must Fall," and at the same time dismayed those feminine admirers who had complacently typed him as a gentle boudoir Romeo, Robert Montgomery has been wanting to repeat the

performance. Now, in "ihe Earl of Chicago," M-G-M again give him the chance to be bad. And he is pretty good. But, like most encores, the film falls short of his first triumphant venture into the underworld, This time the sleek Mr. Montgomery portrays a complicated gangster, a Chicago thug who double-crosses and murders his way (by proxy) into a dominating position among the postProhibition rackets, but who is himself allergic to firearms. He shakes like a jelly at the very sight of a gun. This choice young specimen falls heir (quite legitimately) to an ancient and honourable English earldom and crosses the Atlantic with the frankly dishonest intention of getting what he can out of it. But in England, blood miraculously begins to tell. The influence of ancestral halls, family ‘portraits, ritual in the House of Lords, and obsequious oldest inhabitants on his lordly estate, gradually but irresistibly work a change in the soul of this scion of the Chicago sewers (once removed). Hollywood, however, spares us the complete redemption; or rather it brings it about in rather surprising fashion. The noble gangster doesn’t turn over a completely clean leaf, marry into the gentry (surprisingly enough, there isn’t a heroine in the story) and become a Master of Hounds. Instead, he loses his fear of guns just long enough to shoot an equally crooked accomplice, faces trial by his peers, and then, tradition coming uppermost at last, puts on his regalia and marches to his execution in the Tower, with firm tread and chin up-dying with the dignity of a nobleman, while the faithful family butler (Edmund Gwenn) looks on with tearful approval at this sign of grace. Montgomery does it remarkably well; so do all the assistant peers, gangsters, rustics, and retainers; but the story rather sticks in one’s throat.