The Spellbinder

Lee Tracy was Hollywood's specialist for fast talking shysters, con-men, and underhanded newspapermen in the 1930s. With his nasally voice, staccato delivery, wise-guy manner, and diminutive size, he had a knack for comic characters and he was kept busy playing cynical reporters and press agents during the pre-code era. He was also a heavy drinker with a reckless lifestyle off screen, which ended more than one studio contract. By the mid-thirties, Tracy was without a studio and freelancing on smaller films. He made The Spellbinder (1939) for the B-unit of RKO and journeyman director Jack Hively, who rose up from the editing room to the director's chair. Jed Marlowe is a classic Tracy role, a silver-tongued lawyer who befuddles witnesses on the stand and manipulates juries with theatrics, but apart from the shenanigans behind the scenes of the first trial (he pays off a small company of actors to play his client's family in court) there's no comic twist here. He's a cynic when it comes to law but a doting, protective single father when it comes to his teenage daughter Janet (Barbara Read). She adores him and plays hooky from finishing school to watch him defend his client Tom Dixon (Patric Knowles) for murder. Knowles was a handsome British import whose poise and confidence landed him a few leading roles but mostly was relegated to supporting parts. He played drama, comedy, and adventure with equal success. For The Spellbinder he played another of his specialties: the charming cad. Bubbly and spirited Barbara Read made her film debut playing Deanna Durbin's sister in Three Smart Girls (1936) but soon slipped into B-movies and never really broke back out. She did, however, take over the role of Margot Lane in a trio of films opposite Kane Richmond as Lamont Cranston, aka The Shadow, starting in 1946. Allan Lane, who plays the dogged but principled crime reporter Steve Kendall, went on to become a B-movie cowboy star, playing Red Ryder (taking over from Bill Elliott) and Rocky Lane in dozens of matinee westerns through the 1940s and 1950s, and ended his career as the voice of the talking horse in the sitcom Mr. Ed. And if you recognize Leonid Kinskey, who plays the saxophone player who hauls his horn up with him to the witness stand, it could be from any number of roles - he was a prolific character actor, usually playing witty foreigners or immigrants in dozens of films through the thirties and forties - but it's probably because of a small but memorable part he had in one of the most iconic Hollywood films ever made: he's Sascha the good-natured bartender in Casablanca (1942). "Mr. Tracy is a show by himself," wrote the unnamed film critic in the brief New York Times notice, while the Motion Picture Daily reporter identified only as G. McG wrote: "Sophisticated audiences may view The Spellbinder as an attraction they can get along with or without; yet there's sufficient melodrama, comedy, suspense and human interest in it to hold attention of rank and file patronage." By Sean Axmaker Sources: "The Spellbinder film review," The New York Times, August 24, 1939. "The Spellbinder film review," G. McG. The Motion Picture Daily, Tuesday, July 25, 1939. IMDb