THE MIND READER (1933)

Minor, fairly predictable melodrama with only Warren William to recommend it. I like William when he plays a total shit (as in EMPLOYEE'S ENTRANCE) or a detective (his Perry Mason movies); here, he's on shakier ground as an oily con man who falls in love and tries to give up his grifting ways, but is sucked back in anyway. We see him in a series of con jobs: operating as a "painless dentist," selling hair tonic, and working as a carny for a flagpole sitter (his sidekick Allen Jenkins). Soon, William sets himself up as Chandra the Great, a mind-reader. His gimmick is that he has the audience write questions on small pieces of paper, burns them in a bowl, then "reads" the messages from the great beyond and answers them--actually, the questions are dumped from the bottom of the bowl to Jenkins, sitting under the stage, who transmits the questions to William, wearing earphones in his turban. This is fun to watch for a while, especially when they trick a small-town sheriff who wants to run them out but ends up a big fan. But soon, William falls for young Constance Cummings and she forces him to go straight. Life as a door-to-door salesman doesn't work out and, behind Cummings' back, William goes back to the mind-reading biz, getting some high society women as clients. When distraught Mayo Methot throws herself down an elevator shaft as a result of William's doings, everything goes downhill until William winds up on the run from a murder charge. William is at his best in an onstage drunken breakdown late in the film. Jenkins is good, as is Clarence Muse as another assistant. Clara Blandick (OZ's Auntie Em) has a small role. Jenkins has the movie's final line, a humorous reference to the end of Prohibition. [TCM]