Give Tallulah Bankhead credit for having tried her hardest to break into the mold of the many exotic actressses suffering in sable in the early 1930's. Here, she's a darling of society who spends much of her time gambling, and when she gets a little bit too in debt goes to an old flame (Irving Pichel) for financial help. He is willing to agree...for a price, and that makes her his....any time he wants her. Of course, she's in a supposedly respectable marriage to the very boring Harvey Stephens, so she refuses, and Pichel responds in the most vile way possible. As is typical in pre-code melodramas of this sort, there's always a lethal weapon, and you don't do to Tallulah what he did to her without some sort of repercussion.
Pichel is one of the most vile villains on screen, having spent much of his career playing creepy characters in movies, a la Peter Lorre. If it wasn't the possessive servant to "Dracula's Daughter", it was Fagin in a low-budget early "Oliver Twist". Here, he plays one of the most nefarious kind of characters-the type that seems civilized on the outside but is truly barbaric inside his soul. There's no remorse for what becomes of this rogue, so he does his job extremely well. Tallulah gets a great dramatic scene in court, proving that even with maudlin and sometimes offensive material, she could make it seem better than it actually was. As with another early pre-code film she starred in ("My Sin"), she was directed by George Abbott, who like Tallulah was more at home on stage where he was a legend.
The fortunate thing about a lot of these pre-code movies which when seen in historical retrospective is that while they are all very similar, many of them are relatively short, usually under 80 minutes, and wrapped up very neatly in a glamorous bundle of furs and high fashion. Tallulah may have not been successful in film (with the exception of Hitchcock's "Lifeboat"), but the legend that is Ms. Bankhead makes these films fun to capture, especially because of their rarity. Fortunately, "The Cheat" has made its way onto DVD, and hopefully her other Paramount films will follow suit.
Pichel is one of the most vile villains on screen, having spent much of his career playing creepy characters in movies, a la Peter Lorre. If it wasn't the possessive servant to "Dracula's Daughter", it was Fagin in a low-budget early "Oliver Twist". Here, he plays one of the most nefarious kind of characters-the type that seems civilized on the outside but is truly barbaric inside his soul. There's no remorse for what becomes of this rogue, so he does his job extremely well. Tallulah gets a great dramatic scene in court, proving that even with maudlin and sometimes offensive material, she could make it seem better than it actually was. As with another early pre-code film she starred in ("My Sin"), she was directed by George Abbott, who like Tallulah was more at home on stage where he was a legend.
The fortunate thing about a lot of these pre-code movies which when seen in historical retrospective is that while they are all very similar, many of them are relatively short, usually under 80 minutes, and wrapped up very neatly in a glamorous bundle of furs and high fashion. Tallulah may have not been successful in film (with the exception of Hitchcock's "Lifeboat"), but the legend that is Ms. Bankhead makes these films fun to capture, especially because of their rarity. Fortunately, "The Cheat" has made its way onto DVD, and hopefully her other Paramount films will follow suit.