The Great Gatsby, 1926

“They were careless people, they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

It speaks volumes that this one paragraph in a novel nearly 100 years old can be so prophetic when we think of the times we live in today. Indeed when you think of so many facets of our modern age, celebrity culture, the ascendance of the 1%, social media, it’s amazing how prescient the themes introduced in The Great Gatsby were. Allied to that, the ability of F Scott Fitzgerald to expand on these themes to include loss, grief and unrequited love in such spare language, with not a syllable out of place.

The Great Gatsby for me is the Great American Novel, and deserves its place in the pantheon of anglophone literature. As someone in the UK the book provides that critique of the American condition that we Brits can feel smug about, but without being excoriating. Instead the critique seems to come from a place of affectionate observation, the work of an individual who can coolly review his circumstances like a true insider. Fitzgerald’s use of language is spare and sparse throughout all his novels and short stories. This provides an easy experience for the reader whilst simultaneously provoking an emotional punch that is searing in its honesty.

Against this backdrop you can see how a book such as this has proved to be one of cinema’s greatest challenges. One that, arguably, Hollywood is yet to master.

You may have seen my previous post featuring the trailer for the movie. Unfortunately this trailer is the only known footage left from the film. The picture in its entirety is lost. Therefore we can only surmise what it contained from what we see in that trailer and from newspaper and fan magazine reviews.

Certainly, from what we see in the trailer there was quite a focus on jazzy parties and this is verified in reviews. This seems to be a regular and fundamental error in the many film adaptations over the years and perhaps why there hasn’t been a definitive portrayal of the novel. The excitement of the Jazz Age is the backdrop to The Great Gatsby but the real action lies in is America’s version of the class system, where the lowly Jimmy Gatz has to reinvent himself by nefarious means. The sadness lies in his futile attempt to win back the love of a superficial and deeply unhappy individual. The parties are one aspect to Gatsby’s desperate aim to join with a monied class who neither care for him or about him.

Plus there is the issue of casting. Tom Buchanan has been a more successful venture, surprisingly as he’s both stuck up and a thug, but it’s his cartoonish element that provides a useful hook for casting directors. However the pivotal roles of Jay and Daisy have proved more challenging, as it’s so difficult to transfer their charisma to the screen. For me Leonardo di Caprio is the definitive Gatsby. In an otherwise flawed attempt to capture the essence of the book, di Caprio has the looks, the charm but also the mass of insecurities and vulnerabilities, as well as Gatsby’s searing anger. Viewing the 1926 trailer and publicity materials, I’m not convinced that Warner Baxter brought this level of understanding to this role.

Speaking of casting, what of William Powell at this time? Well 1926 was proving to be a pivotal year for Powell at Paramount Pictures. The Great Gatsby was one of several solid roles that were building his profile, as well as the generally positive notices he received for his craft in newspapers and fan magazines. The part of George Wilson was certainly one such role and we know that Powell would have prepared carefully for the part.

Now it may seem incongruous to those familiar with Powell’s later work in talking pictures to equate the sassy, snappy conveyer of one liners in films like The Thin Man with the character of George Wilson. Tom Buchanan’s smugly dismisses the cuckold George as a man “so dumb he doesn’t know he’s alive”. However for William Powell it was another opportunity to showcase the variety of his range.

Fitzgerald’s Hollywood Dream and Disillusionment

Fitzgerald unfortunately detested the screen version. Zelda wrote to her daughter, Scottie, “We saw The Great Gatsby at the movies… It’s ROTTEN and awful and terrible and we left.”

This was to be a portent of things to come. Fitzgerald admired the modernity of Hollywood and wanted to be a participant in it but it was to no avail. Indeed at the time of his and Zelda’s visit to see The Great Gatsby, he was at work on a screenplay for a movie featuring Constance Talmadge. However this was to come to nothing. The screenplay was considered weak and as Fitzgerald wrote later,

“I… was confident to the point of conceit… I honestly believed that with no effort on my part I was a sort of magician with words – an odd delusion on my part when I had worked so desperately hard to develop a hard, colourful prose style.”

He returned to Hollywood in 1937 but in poor physical and emotional health. The pull back to Hollywood was financial not artistic and there was a cynicism to his transactions there. Fitzgerald described a Hollywood gathering thus,

“The dinner party in fact looked just like a Metro movie—except for the lines. Since the writers could not balance the actors on their knees like ventriloquists and give them dialogue, everything was a bit flat—[William] Powell was facetious without wit—Norma [Shearer] heavy without emotion. Selznick snoring.”

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

This piece was written for the Silent Movie Day Blogathon, hosted by In the Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood and Silentology, where there are other fantastic silent movie pieces for you to enjoy!

References/Recommended Reading:

Crazy Sundays: F Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood – Aaron Latham

Slow Fade: F Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood – Arthur Krystal, The New Yorker

F Scott Fitzgerald’s Tense, Unhappy Relationship with Hollywood – Deirdre Clemente, The Atlantic

William Powell: The Life & Films – Roger Bryant

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The Great Gatsby, as portrayed by Warner Baxter, 1926

Coming Soon! The Great Gatsby (1926)

For this year’s Silent Movie Day Blogathon, hosted by In the Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood and Silentology, I will be covering the 1926 version of The Great Gatsby! William Powell played the unfortunate George Wilson, as seen in this trailer.

Sea Horses (1926)

It’s ironic that for the purposes of the What a Character Blogathon we are heading back into villainy as Powell’s previous outing White Mice was his actual first starring role, and I will come back to that picture at a later date.

Lorenzo Salvia, as portrayed by Powell, is a drunken Italian who abandons his wife, (Florence Vidor) and makes off for the island of Panda.

Inevitably Salvia’s dissipated lifestyle leads to his destruction before his wife can save him.

However despite all this drama Photoplay Magazine describes the pace of this lost picture as ‘snail-like’.

It is worth mentioning that around the time of filming Powell had been signed to a long term contract at Paramount – at this stage in his career Powell’s ability to play effective villains and secondary roles had enabled him to achieve some consolidation, even if this meant treading water in movies like Sea Horses which were little more than programmers. Despite such dull fare 1926 was to prove to be an exciting year for William Powell, with some exciting roles to come!

This piece forms part of the What a Character! Blogathon hosted by Once Upon a Screen, Outspoken & Freckled and Paula’s Cinema Club. Enjoy!

References:

William Powell: The Life and Pictures – Roger Bryant

Photoplay Magazine, May 1926, p.52

A Clara Bow and William Powell Duet

“She dislikes gossip and is unquestionably the most gossiped about women in Hollywood…” according to Photoplay Magazine. Clara Bow was one of the defining spirits of 1920s America, the ‘It’ girl who was an idol for millions of working class girls across the industrialised world. Clara personified the flapper who could be impossibly glamorous while retaining her down to earth roots. Yet despite all that power in her image, as well as the oodles of cash they were making out of that image, Paramount wouldn’t dream of putting that to good use in quality film-making. Instead and despite the roaring success of her career defining film ‘It’, Clara was contracted to make run of the mill pictures such as ‘My Lady’s Lips’ and ‘The Runaway’, two films which also starred the up and coming William Powell.

For the purposes of this Dynamic Duos blogathon William Powell and Clara Bow are not an obvious choice – Bow’s biographer would certainly say that these two pictures that Powell and Bow appeared in together were the very opposite of dynamic, also borne out by contemporary reviews which were lukewarm to say the least. Stenn makes the powerful argument that Bow was at the acme of her career in 1926 having made ‘It’ and was raking in money for B P Schulberg’s Paramount Pictures. You would assume therefore that Clara Bow would have the pick of the best quality scripts and plum projects. However, Stenn reveals that the opposite was the case and Schulberg farmed Bow out to make bog standard fare such as My Lady’s Lips and The Runaway and in her naivety Bow was happy to acquiesce. What makes David Stenn such an interesting writer and researcher is how he exposes Hollywood and its history of exploitation of females and how this became normalised as part of its business model. Sadly this makes the recent Weinstein revelations no surprise whatsoever.

The dynamic part comes when you look at the career trajectory of William Powell in contrast to Clara Bow. It’s a tale of female disempowerment and class privilege that we’re becoming all too familiar with – Powell by this time had been signed to a long term contract at Paramount. After years of struggle as an actor, even playing the villain roles he was becoming known for, enabled him a level of financial comfort he’d never experienced in the decade before as he toiled away on the stage and in small movie roles. More comfort was to come for Powell however as by 1930 and the talking picture, unlike Bow, Powell was able to negotiate what projects he wanted to work on and how many pictures a year he intends to make. This was to be expected from the university educated son of an accountant – Powell’s father became his manager and negotiated both contracts and ensured Powell’s earnings were invested prudently enabling his son a level of freedom and power to control his career accordingly.

Clara Bow couldn’t have been more opposite, a background as far removed from Powell’s as it’s possible to imagine. Bow was a working class girl born into abject poverty in Brooklyn, the child of an alcoholic absentee father and a deeply troubled mother. Stenn in fact excoriates Bow’s father, Robert, as also ruthlessly abusive, more than willing to exploit Clara once she made it big in Hollywood and only interested in the level of financial return he could scam out of her to maintain his dissipated lifestyle. Allied to her lack of knowledge about contract and career management generally, Bow was also shunned by Hollywood ‘society’ for a supposed lack of decorum. No invites to San Simeon were sent Clara Bow’s way! Therefore, although remunerated handsomely, Bow was never given the opportunity to truly capitalise on her enormous talent for emotional expression.

This post is part of the Dynamic Duos Blogathon – please check out the other stories here!

References/Recommended Reading:

Clara Bow: Runnin Wild – David Stenn

William Powell: The Life and Films – Roger Bryant

Coming Soon! Clara Bow in Photoplay Magazine, April 1926

Watch out for my feature on co-stars William Powell and Clara Bow for the Dynamic Duos Blogathon, hosted by Aurora at Once Upon A Screen on 19 – 20 May!

Beau Geste (1926)

“I knew all about that man – where he was born, who his parents were, why he joined the Foreign Legion. I knew he was a degenerate and what the circumstances were which led to that state of affairs. Characters like that lift this business of acting out of the commonplace, mechanical rut and portraying them becomes a real joy.”

Thus William Powell explained how he made his characterisation of Boldini in Beau Geste so realistic and believable, but also provided us with a very thoughtful and humane consideration of how a character can become a flesh and blood human being. As opposed to presenting a mere shadow on the screen, Powell brought to life individuals with a chronology and back story to explain their actions.

For the What A Character blogathon I’m jumping ahead a year to 1926, and to a picture that was designed to showcase Ronald Colman as the ultimate hero, but as was becoming common practice, ended up being another opportunity for William Powell to steal the show with an in-depth study of humankind’s failings.

In Beau Geste, Powell played Boldini, a lickspittle coward, blackguard and cheat who’s only agenda is to preserve his own neck even if it is at the expense of others. I have to confess I watched this film a number of months back and was sorely disappointed. The picture had received pretty much universal acclamation in the contemporary reviews I had read and you can see for yourself in Mordaunt Hall’s piece for the New York Times below, as well as others linked. In addition Beau Geste won the prestigious Photoplay Magazine Medal of Honour for 1926. Swayed by this I was expecting a fast paced movie full of action, but actually found parts of it quite plodding.

However, in preparation for this blogathon I thought I must give the film a second chance and this time round I enjoyed it more fully. I suspect that’s because I’m more acclimatised to silent pictures and have come to realise the importance of place and atmosphere – enjoyment of silent film needs to be an immersive experience, and watching a poor print on YouTube on my morning train commute would inevitably dull my viewing pleasure. Imagine Mordaunt Hall as he describes Beau Geste for the first time – in a New York Picture palace, no doubt all the invited guests in evening dress, with full orchestra to keep the pace of the picture. With these types of elements present Beau Geste must have created a stupendous evening of adventure for the picture goer.

Bearing all this in mind, I sat down for a second viewing and was much more satisfied. Ronald Colman always brings a laconic charm to his roles, with a slight hint of irony, which ensures that his movies don’t become sappy and this is especially the case with Beau Geste. This tale of love, honour and betrayal could be very plodding and worthy, but Colman’s playing style offers a hint of emotional distance that I suspect would be very natural to the Englishman.

However we’re here to discuss William Powell’s contribution to Beau Geste as a character actor and as the Photoplay Magazine reviewer said about Powell and Noah Beery, “…watch these two boys cop the picture.” Powell’s biographer, Roger Bryant is firmly of the view that his characterisations are as authentic as any portrayal from the supposedly ‘naturalistic’ method style of the 1950s and includes Powell’s rendering of Boldini in his conclusion. Thanks to his careful preparation and the seriousness which he brought to his craft, Powell presents Boldini as a man who is perpetually desperate and who’s lack of honour does for him in the end. The ultimate theme of Beau Geste is honour, and Boldini is the antithesis of honour as opposed to Beau Geste, and that cannot be presented two-dimensionally.

This is my entry in this year’s What A Character! Blogathon – do have a look at my compadres’ entries, there’s some wonderful reads about some wonderful actors!

References/Recommended Reading:

William Powell: The Life & Films – Roger Bryant

Mordaunt Hall Review in the New York Times, 26 August 1926

Photoplay Magazine, October 1926, p.52

Motion Picture Magazine, November 1926, p.60

Coming Soon! Beau Geste, Exhibitors Herald, 18 September 1926

Watch out for the What A Character Blogathon on 15 December!

Bebe Daniels – Silent Screwball

For the Addicted to Screwball Blogathon I am celebrating the career of a truly remarkable lady, who achieved enormous success in silent and talking pictures, movies and radio, in the US and the UK, and in drama as well as comedy, although we’ll be taking a look mostly at Bebe Daniels’ comedic triumphs in this piece. For a kick off, here’s a real treat – Bebe’s appearance on the American version of This Is Your Life, which will tell you all about her life story: 

The Boy and The Girl

Bebe was born in 1901 in Dallas, Texas, into a theatrical family, who moved to Los Angeles. Bebe was 7 when she appeared in her first movie, but in 1910 actually starred in her first feature length picture, as Dorothy in the Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It’s amazing to consider that William Powell’s future friends and co-stars all got their breaks through the Hollywood magic of short comedies and like Carole Lombard and Jean Harlow, Bebe had come to the attention of Hal Roach. Bebe was cast as the love interest in Harold Lloyd’s Lonesome Luke series, which Roach and Lloyd felt had become somewhat moribund. The Luke character was a reverse of Chaplin’s tramp character insofar as Luke clothes were too tight as opposed to too baggy.  Bebe’s mother wasn’t hugely impressed. As far as she was concerned her daughter’s appearances in movies as a child actress were merely a means to an end and certainly weren’t a long term career option. Mrs Daniels had good reason to think this way – actresses in short comedy films were generally just eye candy and fodder for various slapstick goings on and the Luke series was no different to the extent that Lloyd, who continued to tire of the role, described the love scenes as a ‘travesty of the real thing.’

However, Lloyd was developing his now famous ‘glasses’ character, a more human character than Luke. In complete opposition to Luke, this new character was not a loser, but a lovable and realistic young suitor for Bebe’s affections (‘The Boy’). This also allowed development for Bebe’s character (‘The Girl’). Now Bebe could play hard to get, due to an overbearing father for instance, with hilarious consequences. 

It seems odd now when you take into account that Bebe was still a teenager when she appeared with Harold Lloyd as her performances became more self assured. Bebe was blessed with a very mobile face and quick, darting eyes which she employed to great comic effect, in fact her natural comedy timing was brought to the fore in these pictures. 

“I was fourteen when I went with the Rolin-Pathé comedies to play opposite Harold Lloyd, and I think this was the best possible training during my ‘growing up’ years, for comedy has taught me the values of lights and shade of emotional work that I probably would not have gained had I done only serious dramas. I loved it, too; it was a happy experience, for everyone in the company was so fine, and we were like a big family,” she said in 1919.

Gender Bender

Harold and Bebe fell in love during their time together at the Roach studios and became a popular Hollywood couple, entering and often winning the many dance contests to be found at local nightspots. It was at one of these contests at the Sunset Inn in 1917 that Bebe got chatting to Cecil B DeMille who became intrigued with Bebe and saw potential in her. He offered her the opportunity of more dramatic work, which Bebe initially turned down as she still had a year to run on her Roach contract, but sure enough once that had finished she took up DeMille’s offer and was contracted to Paramount for the remainder of the silent era, which is where she came into contact with William Powell. Although Bebe did make dramatic movies, such as Dangerous Money, her natural flair for comedy was still made full use of and in particular, Bebe made a couple of role reversal flicks, Señorita and She’s a Sheik, sending up the current fashion for swashbuckling adventures and desert based melodramas, the joke being that the swashbuckler/sheik character was actually a girl! 

Her last movie with William Powell was Feel My Pulse, about a hypochondriac heiress who winds up on an island that she’s due to inherit thinking there’s a sanitarium there, as opposed to Bill Powell’s rum running business. Similar to a lot of her pictures Bebe’s character isn’t merely a weak vessel, as she gets to grips with the fact that she has no control over her life, she kicks off spectacularly and hilariously, ransacking the entire building until all present are sure that this dame isn’t going to be made a patsy of any longer! Oh, and she gets to run off into the sunset with Richard Arlen which is a definite bonus.

Of the 53 silent feature films Bebe made, 39 are lost. 

Bebe Daniels and Life with the Lyons

Now although this piece is primarily about Bebe’s silent comedies, it would be remiss of me not to conclude with Bebe’s greatest achievement, in my view, Life with the Lyons. When you think of all those massive BBC radio comedies of the 1950s, such as The Goon Show, Take It From Here, Hancock’s Half Hour and many more, it is truly remarkable that Life with the Lyons is also included in that venerated group of great comedies. Remarkable because the main writer of the show was that American former silent screen idol, Bebe Daniels herself. 

Bebe had married Ben Lyon in Hollywood in 1930 and like a lot of Hollywood stars, would come to the UK on theatre and music hall tours. The difference with Bebe and Ben was that they decided to stay here. 

By this time they had two children, Barbara and Richard, and they figured a nice house in the countryside would be a perfect setting to bring their kids up. However when war broke out in 1939 they had a tough choice to make. Thus, Barbara and Richard were sent back to Hollywood to live with Bebe’s mother for the duration of the war while Bebe and Ben stayed on in England, which garnered the British public’s respect and gratitude. Indeed Bebe went on to be awarded with the Medal of Freedom by Harry S Truman on account of her work as the only female reporting on the Normandy landings.

During the war Ben Lyon had an idea for a comedy show that would raise the morale of the troops as well as the public, which he took to the BBC’s then Head of Light Entertainment, Pat Hillyard. Hi Gang, also starring the comedian Vic Oliver, would run for 9 years and Life with he Lyons was its sequel – a sitcom about an ordinary Hollywood family who happen to live in London, starring not only Bebe and Ben but Barbara and Richard too! In fact even Barbara’s boyfriend and later husband, Russell Turner, and Richard’s fiancée were roped into making appearances on the show. The Kardashians weren’t the first at this game! Indeed, there was an element of rudimentary augmented and scripted reality in Life with the Lyons as Bebe would use real life occurrences and her family’s idiosyncrasies to comedic effect in the show. Ben was the vain former Hollywood star, having a bit of a mid-life crisis as he reminded anyone who was listening about the time he snogged Jean Harlow in Hells Angels.

Barbara was the teenage drama queen (‘I’ll die, I’ll just DIE!!!’) and Richard the annoying kid brother who would devote an inordinate amount of time to upsetting his big sister. 

Bebe would write the show with her co-writers in the cellar at the Lyon’s family home in London, perfecting each script before rehearsal and recording. Bebe’s attention to detail paid off as the show was rewarded with 20 million listeners, and eventually television and film versions.

I should add here as an aside for those of us of a certain age that one of Bebe’s co-writers was Bob Block who would go on to write the children’s sitcom Rentaghost. And the Lyon’s Scottish maid was played by Molly Weir – McWitch in Rentaghost!

Anyway, do have a listen to Life with the Lyons below. A general rule of thumb when listening to BBC radio comedies of the golden age – if the studio audience are laughing before the theme music even starts you know you’re onto a winner!

And finally, one last link: 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009y9gr

This is Bebe’s 1956 appearance on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs (well it wasn’t Radio 4 then, it was the BBC Home Service but that’s by the by). Here Bebe talks about her life and her favourite pieces of music should she become a castaway on a deserted island. Note her luxury item is a typewriter! Ben Lyon went on to be surprised by Eamonn Andrews in the U.K. version of This Is Your Life in 1963 and it’s Eamonn’s voice you can hear in that Pathé news clip above.

Ben, Bebe and Anna Neagle at the Adelphi Theatre in London, 1966

References/Recommended Reading:

http://www.silentsaregolden.com/articles/bebeharoldarticle.html

RADIO: LIFE WITH THE LYONS

William Powell: The Life and Films – Roger Bryant

William Powell’s Silent Villains!

With Thelma Todd in Nevada (1927)

‘Not Guilty’ screamed the headline in Photoplay Magazine in 1929 – ‘Bill Powell declares he is not a picture stealer’. At this point William Powell had appeared in 33 motion pictures since his debut in Sherlock Holmes in 1922. He’d obviously fancied himself as a leading actor but his journey to that status was going to be a circuitous one – as Bill noted in my post on When Knighthood Was In Flower, ‘It was my ambition to be a screen hero… But I had a wonderful sneer and a leer which registered perfectly. So I became a villain.’ A villain so charismatic that, as Photoplay Magazine noted, he had a tendency to be the only person on the screen that you would want to look at.

With Clara Bow in My Lady’s Lips (1925)

After freelancing around, in 1925 the Los Angeles Times announced that Jesse Lasky had signed William Powell to an exclusive contract with Paramount Pictures, ‘I consider Mr Powell one of the foremost artists in motion pictures and he is a most welcome addition to the ranks of our character players… He will be featured in a number of our most ambitious productions, plans for which are under way.’ And this is where Bill’s villainous career really started to kick on. 

So imagine this scene: Bebe Daniels is cowering on a double bed edging away from the attentions of William Powell who is coming ever closer, chattering away manically. This scene, where Powell’s character threatens rape is from the 1926 comedy Feel My Pulse (which can be viewed on YouTube) and is incredibly unsettling! 

As ‘Nemesis’ in Feel My Pulse (1928)

It was then that I realised how complete an actor Powell was, because he is so sinister in that scene that it threw out all my preconceptions about my lovely gorgeous William Powell, the charming light comedian of the screwball era. Ugh! What a scumbag!

You can split William Powell’s villain roles into a couple of recognisable tropes, which I have outlined below:

The Shady Foreigner

As seen in When Knighthood Was In Flower, The Bright Shawl, Under the Red Robe, Dangerous Money, Too Many Kisses, The Beautiful City, Sea Horses, Beau Geste, She’s a Sheik

With Bebe Daniels in She’s a Sheik (1927)

The name ‘William Powell’ on its own is a bit generically Anglo-Saxon don’t you think? It doesn’t denote ‘film star’. I mean any old joe can be called ‘William Powell’ really. But William Powell’s looks belied his rather ordinary name, as he was the owner of a rather exotic looking face. This face, in the silent era, enabled him to play what would be considered ‘ethnic’ roles in those unenlightened times. Ronald Colman, on account of his brunette appearance, would also be cast occasionally as Italians, but William Powell began to specialise in a type of sinister criminally minded foreigner, often one who’s sniffing around the film’s heroine in a vaguely threatening manner. A slight change to that character was Boldini, the coward from Beau Geste. Boldini isn’t in the business of chasing women, more after saving his own skin at the expense of his compadres.

These types of roles have always been a well known device in Hollywood that we can all recognise, playing into and exploiting the public’s fears of the unknown. Very relatable today in my view. 

The Smarmy Git

Love’s Greatest Mistake (1927)

As seen in When Knighthood was in Flower, Special Delivery, Beau Geste, Aloma of the South Seas, Time to Love, Paid to Love

This type of role was also often engaged in the pursuit of the film’s heroine, but instead of merely using threatening behaviour, would turn on a type of slimy, oleaginous charm. These characters would often be smart talking, super rich smoothies used to getting their own way, until either the hero or heroine would give them a metaphorical kick in the nuts. Bill would play this type of bounder with moustache smoothed and eyebrow raised, most famously in Paid to Love where Prince Eric peels a banana while Virginia Valli undresses behind a screen, the dirty devil!

Other Assorted Slimes

For Bill’s other silent pictures there’s a mixture of cowards, gangsters and hoods, but also a smattering Western villains. Naturally the common theme that links all these characters is that they get a very satisfying comeuppance in the end, but the Powell charm ensured that even if he made an early exit it was his part that would stick in your mind. 

“Bill, I’ve always been curious; how do you feel when you’re about to commit a murder?” asked Ricardo Cortez in 1927.

“Right now, I’m feeling pretty punk. I was just thinking that if I had gotten up ten minutes earlier, I’d have had time to eat some cereal. If there’s anything I hate to do, it’s commit a murder before breakfast.”

This post is part of the Great Villains Blogathon hosted by Speakeasy, Silver Screenings and Shadows & Satin. Check these evils demons out!

References/Recommended Reading:

William Powell: The Life and Films – Roger Bryant 

Photoplay Magazine, March 1929