The Scoundrel

Noel Coward meets a watery end in The Scoundrel

Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's The Scoundrel, from 1935, is a stagey Manhattan melodrama that morphs into a supernatural tale of redemption about two thirds of the way through. Private Lives turning into A Christmas Carol. Noel Coward, exhausted with appearing onstage in London and New York after the long run of Design for Living, plays Anthony Mallare, a New York publisher with a heart of stone. The name Mallare is redolent of a "bad odor" and is a self-reference to one of Hecht's earliest books, the peculiar Fantazius Mallare: A Mysterious Oath. We first see the film's Mallare at his officer where a retinue of resentful flunkies offer a chorus of backbiting commentary on the man. Mallare meets an aspiring poet named Cora Moore (Julie Haydon) who he romances and summarily dumps. As Mallare puts it, love for him is "one month of diversion and six months of farewells."

Pursuing his next romantic conquest, Mallare dies in a plane crash, but his ghost is fated to limbo unless he can find one soul shedding tears over his demise. That soul would be Cora and her tears cap a singularly unconvincing finale. Hecht and MacArthur have little feel for the supernatural, though Coward makes an appropriately pallid ghost. It is the early section featuring dollops of bitchy, sophisticated patter that is more in the wheelhouse of the authors of The Front Page. The misanthropic Mallare is a part tailor made for Coward. His snobby diction and mien suit the part perfectly. However, I don't think Coward was an ideal match for film work, he has the animal grace of a praying mantis and the pedestrian direction of the film does him few favors. 

The film is most effective when Mallare and members of his retinue spout the droll dialogue. The cast is mostly made up of Broadway veterans who acquit themselves well. I particularly enjoyed the clash of Coward's posh delivery with that of Lionel Stander, playing a bard of the working class, who employs his usual Bronx honk. Ms. Haydon struggles vainly in a part that requires her to recite half-baked Millay imitations. Film buffs will spy familiar faces such as Burgess Meredith, O.Z. Whitehead, and Harry Davenport in small roles before they became Hollywood regulars.

The central problem with the film is that Hecht and MacArthur's talents did not extend to the craft of filmmaking, The flick, confined to the Astoria studios in Queens, feels like a filmed play. I could count the number of cinematic flourishes employed on one hand. Lee Garmes' cinematography is a plus, but he is often photographing shoddily painted sets that would look cheap on a Monogram Pictures release. The camera set-ups add little to the picture. One wonder what the results would have been if Hecht and MacArthur had been able to entice a George Cukor or Howard Hawks. Still, there are precious few chances to gauge the appeal of Noel Coward in his heyday and this is one of them.