The Lawyer's Secret (1931) User Reviews (6)

The story and the actors are better than the dialog and pacing..

[AlsExGal · 6/10 · 21 April 2019]

... and I'll lay that at the feet of the directors (count 'em - there are two). This is an early talkie and suffers from the slow pacing of many of those films, plus there is no score whatsoever. The dialog is minimalist in a story that really demands many more words than we get, and much more in the establishment of relationships.

A sailor winds up blowing all his pay at a gambling joint while on leave, he "borrows" a car to get back to his ship on time, gets caught doing that, and then is apprehended in the murder of the guy running the gambling joint. It doesn't help that his gun shot the man. But the truth is the sailor sold his gun to a fellow gambler so he could stay in the game awhile longer. He doesn't have any witness to him selling the gun, and he has no idea who it was he sold the gun to. Will he hang or not? Watch and find out.

This film is full of Paramount talent from the silent era trying to make it in talkies - Clive Brook, Richard Arlen, Charles Buddy Rogers. Plus there is the new talent brought in for talking film - Fay Wray and Jean Arthur. Don't expect screwball Jean Arthur. Here she is so plain vanilla you can hardly taste her.

As for relationships, forget about it. How do I know that Fay Wray and Clive Brooks are engaged? Because they tell me they are! There is zero chemistry between them. There is more chemistry between Charles Buddy Rogers and Fay Wray as brother and sister!

This could have risen to an 8/10 with better direction and dialogue, given the delightful irony of the situation. But I'll give it a respectable 6 as is. If only Hitchcock could have gotten hold of it. It's just the kind of "wrongly accused" story he so loved to direct.

Confidentiality

[boblipton · 6/10 · 15 March 2021]

Fay Wray is engaged to Clive Brook. She asks him to speak with her brother, Charles 'Buddy Rogers.' He's been hanging out with the wrong people. When Brook braces him, Rogers resists, but Brook points out that as a lawyer, he's bound to absolute confidentiality as to a client's private communications; Rogers admits that he's done with the crowd he's been hanging around with. He's just taken part in a robbery with a gambling den owner who has been cheating him, and some one else killed the gambler. Brook urges him to confess, but Rogers refuses. He refuses when an innocent sailor, Richard Arlen, is convicted of the murder, he refuses when Arlen is sentenced to be hanged, he refuses to help when Arlen's fiancee, Jean Arthur comes to ask him to appeal the verdict, and even when Miss Wray asks him.

I'm uncertain of how far lawyerly confidentiality stretches nowadays, but it's a pretty good story, and Brook is fine in the role. In fact, everyone is pretty good, even Miss Arthur in a small, underplayed part. this causes me to wonder about the direction. Louis Gasnier co-directs with Max Marcin, who was better known as a writer. He entered films because he wrote plays, but is best remembered as -- eventually -- the creator of the Crime Doctor radio show. Did he, in effect, serve as a dialogue director here, while Gasnier handled the visuals?

Charles Rogers Doesn't Quite Convince as a Callow Youth

[kidboots · 7/10 · 24 April 2016]

Starting out (even the opening credits cross promoting Clara Bow's cheeky song from "True to the Navy") as a light hearted sailor on a spree type of film it quickly descends to nightmarish reality for the two young stars. Gormless gob Joe Hart (Richard Arlen) desperately sells his gun to dissolute, man about town Laurie Roberts (Charles Rogers) to stay in a crooked dice game. Almost back on his boat Hart is arrested for murder - it seems his gun was found at the scene. Laurie's sister Kay (gorgeous Fay Wray) is engaged to hot shot lawyer Drake Norris (Clive Brook) and Laurie confesses to him that he, while not the killer, was at the scene of the crime, knowing that through the lawyer's code of ethics the secret is safe and cannot be disclosed. At this time in his career Charles Rogers had dropped the "Buddy" to give himself more credibility as a dramatic actor but in my opinion, for this movie, it didn't work. It needed someone like Phillips Holmes who brought credibility to shallow and weakling characters. Rogers seems too nice and though there is a change of heart in the last ten minutes, before then he was immovable, even though his lack of action meant that an innocent man would hang.

The cast is chock full of stars at the top or on the rise. Clive Brook plays Norris whose dilemma of to tell or not to tell drives a wedge between him and his fiancé. Richard Arlen, surprisingly third billed as the innocent sailor disappears during the second half of the film but that gives his girl Beatrice (Jean Arthur) a chance to shine as she moves heaven and earth to convince Drake to look for the real culprit he is so desperate to hide. Fay Wray was kept very busy at Paramount - she went there with Erich von Stroheim when he created his "The Wedding March". While Paramount were less than thrilled with him they loved Fay who they saw as a perfect leading lady but in fact this was her last Paramount film. Jean Arthur was also wilting on the Paramount vine - she had been named a 1929 Wampas baby star after being signed by Paramount the previous year but even when talkies revealed her unique voice the bland ingénue roles still kept coming. After this movie she decided to go back on the stage and really learn her craft.

A Bit of Film Noir Action in the First Quarter-Hour Anyway!

[JohnHowardReid · 6/10 · 8 October 2008]

A 1931 movie with a title like The Lawyer's Secret would seem to promise film noir excitement, and that's certainly what it delivers before the first quarter-hour is up when not-so-innocent Richard Arlen finds himself charged with a murder he had nothing to do with. The real perpetrators are Francis McDonald and Charles "Buddy" Rogers. I'm not giving away any secrets here, because we actually see this pair "at work" in Arthur L. Todd's velvety black, low-key, immaculately noirish photography. But after this typical noir episode which climaxes with a fair spurt of action in which Arlen steals a car, is arrested, is set free, and is then re-arrested, the movie takes a different turn altogether by suddenly raising the curtain on Act One and introducing the lawyer of the title in the person of stiff-as-a-board Clive Brook (or maybe he's just simply as bored as we are with the hokey plot and is not afraid to communicate his opinion of the script to the cinema audience. Interestingly the dialogue director who made no impression on Mr Brook was Max Marcin, who co-wrote the dialogue-bound script with Lloyd Corrigan). The lovely Fay Wray (beautifully gowned in a Travis Banton costume originally designed for another star, but modified here by Edith Head) struggles to rescue the movie from the dead lips of Mr Brook, and, assisted by Jean Arthur's perky girl-friend plus a couple of atmospheric penned-in-the-pen scenes with hero Arlen, almost succeeds.

Interesting story weighed down by age

[kitchent · 4/10 · 30 August 2008]

In my unhealthy quest to view every available Fay Wray film, I picked this one up on the same DVD with "The Sea God" - a kind of Fay Wray/Richard Arlen double feature. "The Sea God" proved to be the better film as "The Lawyer's Secret" was weighed down by excessive staginess and lack of action.

The story is of a lawyer choosing between protecting his client (his fiancé's brother) or saving an innocent man from hanging. This could have been a compelling script with different actors and more innovative direction. Fay Wray is just fine as the fiancé of the lawyer but is given little to do other than look worried. She's still quite a dish, but she never leaves her house until the final scene of the film. It doesn't help that her fiancé is twice her age (Brook born in 1887, Fay in 1907) and looks it.

There were a couple of decent images in the film, with the jail house scene at the tops of the list. Arlen (the wrongly accused man) is informed that the Governor will not intervene and he is then moved to death row. This is a fairly powerful image, that would have been better played almost silent. Although pretty good in most of the film, Arlen nearly ruins this moment with some misplaced "acting".

Overall, I'm glad I saw the film, but probably won't be popping it into the DVD player again anytime soon. "The Sea God", however, on the same disk, will see some more use.

A Must For Jean Arthur Fans

[januszlvii · 10/10 · 15 March 2021]

I have seen a few pre Columbia movies of Jean Arthur's and she was simply not good ( especially in The Greene Murder Case), but here she was outstanding ( including outdoing Fay Wray (Kay Roberts), and this from a Wray fan). Her character ( Beatrice ( Bea) Stephens) does whatever is necessary to keep her sailor sweetie Joe Hart ( Richard Arlen) from being executed for a murder he did not commit. What the Lawyer's Secret refers to is an attorney named Drake Norris knows who was involved in the murder. It turns out to be Kay's brother Laurie ( Charles Buddy Rogers). So Drake had to wrestle with letting an innocent man die or violating his oath not to tell about Laurie. It gets even harder when Kay finds out and naturally she does not want her brother to die. Spoilers ahead: Joe is saved because of the efforts of Bea and a couple of sailors in capturing the real killer, and Laurie finally tells the truth and he gets prison but only 1-3 years because he testified against the killer. Once again an outstanding Jean Arthur performance and a must for her fans. I give it 10/10 stars.