The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941)

The Devil and Daniel Webster (aka All That Money Can Buy) (William Dieterle, 1941) I've known about this film for years, because it was the film that won composer Bernard Herrmann his only Oscar for Best Score ("of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture"), over 19 other scores nominated that year, including his own music from Citizen Kane. 

 

The score is the stand-out element of the movie, with Herrmann accompanying the presence of "Mr. Scratch" with a particularly saw-toothed violin jig that raises the hair on the back of your neck. It is for sure that Academy voters had never heard anything quite like it, even if it did include some American folk-tunes (including "Pop Goes the Weasel!"). I was well acquainted with the music before I could track down the actual film.

It tells the story of Jabez Stonr (James Craig) a farmer, not making it in 1840 New Hampshire, who sells his soul to the Devil (Walter Huston) for seven years of prosperity, which he gets, along with a swelled head, the enviousness of the community, and a reputation as a cruel businessman and a cool husband. Still, he is prominent enough to make the acquaintance of Daniel Webster (Edward Arnold), famed orator, lawyer and politician—who has (so far) resisted Scratch's offer to make him President of the United States. But, as the contract date comes near, Mr. Scratch doubles down on the offer, tempting Jabez for the soul of his new-born son. Stone turns to Webster for legal help with the Devil, naturally.

The Devil and Daniel Webster, adapted from the Stephen Vincent Benet's 1936 short story published in The Saturday Evening Post, had a checkered history at the studio, though. After doing less than blockbuster business, RKO Studios cut it by 20 minutes and released it with a sexier, less folksy ad campaign (see right) under the name All That Money Can Buy, which would seem  to celebrate the profligate life-style its protagonist comes to regret wishing for in the film, rather than the altruistic, socialist one ultimately preached.

It seems that Jabez Stone only really finds redemption until he's joined the Grange. I may be revealing the ending here, but, really, the outcome is inevitable considering the extraordinarily heavy hand that is used to show the tyrannies of wealth, lust, and greed that are the by-products of selling your soul to the Devil. Fortunately, the great orator Daniel Webster is around to plead the case for the defense when a breach of contract occurs. Usually these scenes are the highlights, but in this film it's a disappointment. 

Even though played vigorously (by the least likely actor, Edward Arnold, well-known for playing power-brokers and fascists in many a movie) the Webster homilies that are spun are so much sentimental goo and would curl the lip of Aimee Semple McPherson, much less the hardened denizens of Hell that make up the jury in the matter. Even Frank Capra must have rolled his eyes. But Dieterle seems to have shirked those sections to go all-out for his scenes with The Devil. Mr. Scratch's entrances are extravaganzas with light and smoke, he has the best lines (of course), and a truly creepy performance by Walter Huston (John's dad) with maliciously twinkling eyes, and a smile that's so broad that it may turn feral at any moment. Huston is the thing to see in this film, although Jane Darwell (Ma Joad from The Grapes of Wrath) and Simone Simon (just before she became big with Cat-People) do wonders with their material as well.

Satan Met a Lady (1937)

Satan Met a Lady (William Dieterle, 1937) Warners' second adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's "The Maltese Falcoln" done with a much freer hand and less devotion to the source novel.

When confronted with the Hays Office crackdown on lascivious content in movies, Warner Bros. found a lot of their catalog unreleasable for re-issues. In the short term, they solved the problem by judicious cuts in audience favorites and by creating revamped versions of past product. A new "Maltese Falcon" was put in production a scant five years after the first's release. In the interim, another Hammett property had scored big at the box office; The Thin Man with William Powell and Myrna Loy had proved a sensation, and since nothings exceeds like success, "The Maltese Falcon" was freely adapted to be more in line with what worked with The Thin Man, more comedy and an emphasis on glamour and the high life. So, Sam Spade became detective Ted Shane, as played by Warren William, a stetson-wearing rake, seen at the start of the film as being run out of town by some city-fathers and returning to his old haunts and old job at a detective agency in San Francisco. Among his first clients is Valerie Purvis (Bette Davis) who warns of being tracked by a dangerous man, and before long, Shane's detective-partner (Porter Hall) is killed and the story begins anew.

Same story but, like Hammett's detective, the characters are significantly altered, if the track of story-line still stays basically the same. Take, for example, Joel Cairo who is transformed into a stuffy Brit played by Arthur Treacher (rather than fisticuffs, Shane and the character do some jolly breakage in Shane's apartment); Kaspar Gutman is Madame—note that—Madame Barabbas (Alison Skipworth), and Wilmer is a thick gunman named Kenneth (Maynard Holmes), whom she dotes on, and Effie Perrine, the Spade and Archer receptionist is Miss Murgatroyd (Marie Wilson), the epitome of a dumb blonde. And the falcon? It's now the legendary horn of Roland. The whole debacle is treated as farce, with more interest in having a good time than actually acquiring the MacGuffin.

The film is directed by William Dieterle, one of Warners' prestige directors, having already directed their all-star version of A Midsummer's Night's Dream in 1935, and who would go on to direct the multi-Oscar winner The Life of Emile Zola, The Devil and Daniel Webster, and projects for David O. Selznick. He keeps everything moving breezily for awhile, but the movie stops dead at the end with an exposition scene that makes up for lost dialogue and movie-time (the Huston version, four years later—the only one where the male lead is top-billed—has the same issue, but it's part and parcel of the drama). Davis was so dismissive of the script that she stayed away from filming for three days, hoping to be taken off the job, in favor of the more serious, prestigious roles which she favored.

Satan Met a Lady probably did not need a falcon, as, by itself, it is one strange bird. With its detective that is anything but private and sticks out like a sore thumb, its eccentric cross-gendering to appease the Catholics, and its game of "Who's got the horn," it does no justice to the source novel or the other Hammett adaptation its trying to ape. Five years later, John Huston, hot from his scripting duties for Warners (including Dieterle's Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet) would take the property with another Warners B-player in the lead, and stay true to the novel by scratching away at the layers of lacquer demanded by the studio, to find the gold underneath. 

William and Davis not seeing eye to eye

Lorre, Greenstreet, Bogart, and Astor:
The cast of the next Maltese Falcon waiting in the wings.

Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet

Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet (William Dieterle, 1940) Credit Adolph Hitler for inspiring this film after decreeing in 1938 that "scientific discoveries by Jews are worthless."  There are all manner of refutations to such drivel, but producer Hal Wallis chose to focus on Dr. Paul Ehrlich, who, mere decades previously in Der Fuehrer's domicile, managed to rise above the medical community's flirting with anti-semitism by the sheer brilliance—and obvious results—of his research with the body's own facilities for fighting infections by creating blood serums for diseases, starting, along with Emil Behring, with diptheria in 1894.

But, that was just the beginning for Ehrlich. He began research on immunizations, their techniques, and other types of basic forms of therapy—what he termed, for the laymen and the money-men, "magic bullets" that would target and kill the diseases without harming any of the blood-stream's useful cells. 

John Huston worked on the screenplay (which won an Oscar nomination, losing out to Preston Sturges' The Great McGinty) and one can see the same template he would use to tailor the screenplay for his later film of Freud. We start seeing Ehrlich (played by Edward G. Robinson, who was anxious to get away from his gangster/thug roles) as the medical school nerd, barely tolerated by the senior staff at the medical facility because 1) he's Jewish, 2) he's curious, more so than the other students and 3) he uses an extensive amount of lab time on his own research, which is dismissed as frivolous.

It's hardly frivolous, but it's a stepping stone for more accurate diagnoses than the circumstantial evidence favored and relied upon by the older doctors (and form the basis of their expertise...and seniority). Ehrlich is experimenting with various dyes to enhance the parts of cells so they can easily be discerned through the microscope. The research is championed by one of his classmates in favor with the older doctors, Emil von Behring (Otto Kruger), who sees the value of isolating the nuclei of cells for diagnostic purposes. 

Now, that there is a procedure, a test subject is needed. Ehrlich attends a lecture on tuberculosis, and is able to obtain a sample of the bacterium for study. After much experimentation, he is able to tailor his techniques to isolate and target those cells with his identifying techniques, but in the process, catches the disease himself.

For recuperation, he goes to warmer climates of Egypt with his wife (Ruth Gordon), and in discussions with the doctors there, learns of their studies of the body's immune system and with Behring's help, starts work on a diptheria vaccine for an epidemic that is raging through the country's children at the time. His work is hailed as a major break-through in the treatment of disease through anti-biotics and immunization, but his own country looks at the work with skeptical eyes.

There's an interesting parallel between the science and the political: just as Ehrlich makes his greatest strides, the resistance to his work becomes stronger, as a disease will grow in its own resistance against treatment. Ehrlich will suffer set-backs both in his work and in the arena in which he pursues it, equating professional jealousy and outright prejudice as diseases in their own right. Given the tenor and nature of the the times in which the film was made, it's a carefully embedded message to attack a problem that might be cured in the subconscious, making the film a "magic bullet" of its own.

Dr. Paul Ehrlich c. 1908