Where A Barrymore Fill-In Was Needed
Ricardo Cortez Is The Faux JB In Hat, Coat, and Glove (1934)
Jack Barrymore was supposed to topline this; he
even shot a few days where memory loss was a constant, then ankled in favor of
sub Ricardo Cortez. Word must have gotten round, because this was Barrymore's
last chance at a meaningful lead. There were script revisions he'd done, which
director Worthington Miner incorporated, so Hat, Coat, Glove may bear
imprint of JB despite his leaving. Cortez goes at
half-speed; I don't know when he was so subdued as here. Was the understudy intimidated
by the star he was sent in to replace? There's little that's novel to the story,
others of the cast perhaps let down that they'd not be performing with
Barrymore. Hat, Coat, Glove was filmed prior to Code clampdown, but released
after. There's a death midway through that we see, but can't figure for
manslaughter, suicide, or accident, a neat ploy to let a sympathetic Cortez off
the hook for a finish, but not one the PCA would likely have allowed once
strict policies were set.
Until reading your piece, I had completely forgotten watching this on TCM some months ago. And I still can't remember a thing about it.
ReplyDeleteAnd what a string of magnificent leads Barrymore had had in the previous year or so: State's Attorney, A Bill of Divorcement, Topaze, Reunion in Vienna, Counsellor at Law, Twentieth Century. I believe he'd had problems memorizing scripts since at least Counsellor at Law, although you'd never know it watching that movie.Apparently he had his lines pasted up around the set, something Brando would resort to in his later movies. Alas, Ricardo Cortez(an actor whom I've always liked) was fast running out of meaningful leads himself.
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