"Earl of Chicago" finds Robert Montgomery setting his teeth firmly in a role roughly comparable to that of his Danny in "Night Must Fall" and making an interesting occasion of it and a singularly effective film. That eminent Victorian, Frances Hodgson Burnett, wrote its parent-work in "Little Lord Fauntlero Charles de Grandcourt, Gene Fowler and Lesser Samuels have brought the fable up to date and have spiked it with TNT by establishing a murderous, but gun-shy, Chicago gangster as ihe long-sought-after heir to a British earldom. Little Lord Fauntleroy captivated the gruff old Earl with his sweetness and gentility; Mr. Montgomery's Silky Kilmount captivates no-one, except the old butler, with his lack of it. He's a clear case of environment knocking the props irom the heredity theorists; and when he goes to the gallows, as he goes at the last, your guess is as good as any one's whether his courtliness is that of a hurriedly enrolled member of the House of Lords, or the last-mile bravado of the gas-house gang.
Either argument is easy to defend, and probably will have to be in picture post-mortem during the next two months, but, whatever the interpretation of the last sequence, it cannot alter the larger judgment that the firn has novelty, splendid writing, Superb production and a fascinating central performance. Mr. Montgomerys "Night Must Fall" was his frst intimation of immorality (screen immorality that is), the first inkling that he had talent for anything other than the creation of a gallery of charming playboys.
Now, as then, his early sequences are handicapped by the preconception of the character he is establishing: Silky, with his loud clothing, his barking laugh, his guttersnipe speech, is just Mr. Montgomery making believe. Imperceptibly, then, the characterization takes hold, the typed Mr. Montgomery recedes and the performance has its earned right to be judged on its own high merit, unprejudiced by performances that have gone before.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.